


But I Have My Life

by Miah_Arthur



Series: Closer Than Yesterday [4]
Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Recovery, Relationship(s), Sexual Content, Torture, Trouble, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 05:25:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3716785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miah_Arthur/pseuds/Miah_Arthur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Duke is just starting to get his life in order and his relationship with Nathan underway when he becomes the first target of a shadowy new faction setting out to "set Haven to rights". As the situation in the town unravels and Duke's recovery hangs in the balance, Nathan investigates the attacks and tries to hold everything together. But no-one is safe from being the next victim...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fourth in a series, and is pretty far into the AU. It really won't make a lot of sense without having first read the others in the series.
> 
>  **Many thanks to my beta Roseveare.** She pushes me to be a better writer and this story is stronger (and with many, many fewer grammatical errors) thanks to her help. 
> 
> Disclaimer: Don't own Haven. Not making money off this, etc.

 

# 

**But I Have My Life**

 

“But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.”  
― Banana Yoshimoto, _The Lake_

 

 

### 

CHAPTER ONE

 

NATHAN

 

I knocked on the hatch of the _Cape Rouge_. Not texting first was something we'd been doing for a couple of weeks now.

"Nathan?" Duke's voice was muffled through the door.

"It's me, Duke."

The sound of locks being disengaged started immediately. Duke pushed the door ajar, he said, "Lock up. I'll be inside." By the time I had the door all the way open, he was out of sight around the corner.

Well, that was a little abrupt. I stepped through and shut the door behind me. I started turning locks and sliding deadbolts. The amount of security on the _Rouge_ had reached paranoid levels, even compared to what it had been when Duke made his living as a crook. It took me a minute to be sure I had them all secured. It was a stretch for Duke to allow me to lock the door without him watching, and then see how long he could stand to not check on it. I rounded the corner into the main room, expecting to see Duke cooking based on the scents.

Duke stood around the corner, barely out of sight from the door. I stopped just short of bumping into him. He was shirtless, his jeans barely hanging on his hips, making it obvious they were the only things he was wearing. The sight was tempting, so very tempting. This was the most skin I'd seen since we started dating. His gaze ran up and down my body, lingering in all the right places to telegraph desire. 

I stared back. Duke wasn't all defined muscle and and deeply tanned skin like he had been. He was still thin and actually had tan lines at collar and cuffs, but the sight was no less irresistible. I brought my hand up, hesitating a second before making contact with his chest. I ran my fingers over the tattoo and let it settle over his heart. I was as sure as I could be without looking that I was hard. I ran my hand down Duke's ribs, around to his back, and stepped in closer. Duke's stare was intense; looking for permission. I nodded slightly, and Duke clasped both hands around the back of my head, pulling me in for a kiss. 

I felt off-kilter. Duke hadn't been this passionate any time in the last two months. He broke off the kiss, checking in briefly with eye contact, before beginning to unbutton my shirt. Then he reached for my belt. I had to ask, "Duke. What are you doing?"

"Blowjob. It's time, Nathan. Tell me you don't want this." 

There was no hint of hesitation or anxiety in him. I couldn't feel his touch. It was the only thing that assured me this wasn't another dream. "I want this."

"Yes?" 

I kissed him. We had done quite a lot of kissing recently, so I knew exactly how he liked it. His eyes slid closed. I pulled back a fraction and said, "Yes."

"Come on." He tugged me forward by the tails of my shirt, leading me to the bedroom. He turned us and nudged me back a couple of steps. "Sit."

I was relieved to verify that I was straining at my jeans. The worry had still flitted through the back of my mind that we'd get to this point and my dick wouldn't cooperate. Duke caught me looking and grinned. 

He stepped in close, between my knees, and pushed my shirt off my shoulders. I shrugged my arms out of it. My t-shirt was next to hit the floor. Duke stepped back enough that I had a clear view of him working my belt and pants open. He hooked his fingers into the band of my underwear and I lifted my hips as he pulled my pants and underwear down. I shimmied them down to my ankles, expecting the next move to be him taking his pants off.

Instead he grabbed a bottle of flavored lube off the dresser and drizzled a generous amount on one hand. I watched him slowly glide his hand up and down my dick, spreading the lube. 

"Here, lay down," he said. 

I nodded dumbly, and scooted properly onto the bed. He crawled onto the bed after me. Seeing his mouth slide down over the head almost did me in. He had a grip around the base, keeping me from coming. 

"Just breathe. Don't want to end it too quick, right?"

I took several deep breaths, and nodded. He started up a steady rhythm with his hand on the shaft while putting on a show with his mouth and tongue over the head. He knew I needed to see what he was doing. I didn't last long, and the thought that I had never had anything to worry about went through my mind for a second, before a sense of well-being and relaxation pushed out everything else.

Duke had definitely planned this encounter. He snagged a wet washcloth from the side table and wiped down his mouth and hand, before crawling up to lay beside me. I rolled onto my side and smiled at him. He still had his pants on, so I trailed my hand down to work the button and zipper. 

The zipper stubbornly refused to cooperate one-handed, so I got to my knees to get both hands free. He lifted his hips, so I could pull his pants down. He was only half-hard. I looked up at him, surprised. His head was turned away, body tensed, but the look seemed to be more acute embarrassment than the conditioned fear we'd been working to break through.

"Duke?"

"Thought I was good, Nate. Not sure it's going to work, now." That was definitely embarrassment in his voice. 

"You good with giving it a try?"

He sighed, tilting his head up toward the headboard, but the tension went out of his shoulders. "Just don't expect too much."

I tried, and it worked, at least a little. He got almost completely hard, and judging by the noises he was making, he was thoroughly enjoying it, but then he started going soft again. He was breathing hard and had broken out in a light sweat.

He groaned. "Stop. Stop. I can't do it."

I sat up on my knees, putting some space between us. Duke rolled over so his back was to me and buried his face in the pillow. After several seconds his breathing slowed and he got to his knees and elbows, with his face still pressed against the pillow. 

He slammed a fist into the bed. "Damn it!"

I touched his shoulder, lightly at first, then solidly when he didn't shrug it off. "We'll try again later, Duke."

He sat up on his knees, mirroring my pose. "It won't matter. Nothing's going to change."

"We're sitting here naked. That couldn't have happened a month ago. Not even a week ago, but–"

"It's not in my _head_ , Nathan!" He brushed my hand away as he stood up, and then stalked to the bathroom where he slammed the door. 

What was really going on here? I was missing something important, and I was getting tired of waiting for him to finally be ready to tell me. I heard the shower start up. Right. I could take a hint. I was tying my shoes when the bathroom door opened a crack. 

"Don't leave." His voice was heavy with emotion, but I was still fed up.

"Duke–"

"Please. Stay."

I closed my eyes, isolating myself. This was Duke. He didn't do casual imploring. I caved. "Fine."

I went to the kitchen. Duke had a stack of dishes out on the counter and the food covered on burners set to warm. I resisted the very strong urge to open the cabinet doors to see what it was he was hiding in there. He always had the dishes set before I arrived. Never opened the cabinet doors. Never opened the refrigerator while I was there. 

" _It's not in my head_ ," he'd said. That left medical. I roughly set the plates on the table. I knew he had medical issues. Of course I did. How could he be in that shape and in the hospital for so long and not have residual effects? He still obviously weighed less than he had, but he was gaining. He _looked_ healthier. 

What had Dwight said before Duke went on another case with us? " _Carton of eggs, Chief_." He'd gone on to say something about setbacks to the recovery, but Duke hadn't complained when I told him to wait in the truck the next time, or any time since. Now his " _Nothing's going to change_ " made me wonder. Was this thing that he never wanted to talk about some permanent medical effect of the abuse he'd suffered? 

I set the food on the table. The freezer wasn't off-limits, so I put ice in the glasses and poured tea from the jug on the counter. It was decaf tea. I'd seen the packages shortly after we started dating. He didn't drink caffeine any more than he did alcohol. Why hadn't I seen this sooner? But of course, he had been getting better. I sat down and waited. Maybe he'd had some kind of bad report recently, which had prompted the sudden jump from careful, clothed kissing to blowjobs.

I needed to calm down and let him talk.

Duke walked out of the bedroom a minute later, and I knew immediately that he wasn't going to be talking tonight. His clothing was wrapped around him like armor. He was hunched up, practically vibrating with tension. Forget meeting my gaze, he wouldn't even turn his head toward me. He slid into the seat across from me.

"Thank you. For staying."

He waited, coiled up almost like he was expecting a blow. I didn't take that personally. I knew he trusted me to not touch him right now, or he wouldn't have been this close. "We need to talk."

He nodded, and said quietly. "I know."

"Soon."

He nodded again, and uncoiled slightly. "Friday."

"Tomor–"

"I'm still opening the _Gull_ tomorrow. I've always opened on the holidays. People depend on me to be there for them."

I sighed and started dishing food onto my plate. We'd already had this conversation a few times. The Shaws were hosting a Thanksgiving dinner for a lot of us, and Duke had been the first person Bill had invited. When he'd refused, Parker and I had offered to stay at the _Gull_ with him, but he wouldn't hear it. 

He put a little food on his plate and began pushing it around with his fork. I ate quickly. Neither of us had anything to say. He might have managed three bites while I ate. It was nowhere near six when I had finished and helped him clean up, but I said, "I think I should go now. Friday?"

He looked relieved that I was leaving, and nodded. I opened the door, and realized that he hadn't checked the locks all this time. Hadn't even seemed to think about it. Normally that would be progress. Today it was bittersweet. I heard him re-engaging the locks behind me before I headed toward my truck. Sitting in the driver's seat, I went back over everything that had happened, then texted Dwight telling him to call Duke. 

Right now, knowing that Dwight knew all the answers to the questions that were coming between us was particularly galling, but Duke had said he'd talk Friday, so I held on to that.

 

 


	2. Chapter Two

 

 

****

### Chapter Two

 

DUKE  


 

I arranged my pill bottles neatly on the side table by my bed. It wasn't going to get better, and I couldn't deny that any longer. Even in the hospital they'd _tried_ to tell me. I'd been so messed up then I hadn't known what I was taking or why. Dwight had made sure I took them. Made sure I ate, even learned how to use the feeding pump. No doubt in my mind that he saved my life, medically. But he'd been there when I needed a lifeline back to the real world. Hauled me back from being washed away mentally. 

Then I'd thought, it'll get better. I can do everything I did before. I can have my life back. Turned out to be sheer luck, according to my doctor, that the part of me that ended up with internal bleeding was my wrist and not my brain after that turtle threw me around. I started to fully realize then, but some part of me hoped, and I thought, Nathan doesn't have to know. It won't be forever. When I regain the weight, when I get the anxiety under control, this will clear up or I can have the surgery and it will fix it. I thought I could _will_ things to be normal. 

I stopped fidgeting with the bottles. Following the plan exactly keeps my rhythm mostly stable. I feel pretty okay, have enough energy to follow Nathan around on cases, even though I _can't_ help him when things get rough. My risk for stroke is closer to normal for my age. I just risk bleeding to death every time I trip, and can't get it up for sex. I clenched my fists. I wanted to punch something. Something harder than my pillow, but risking a bleed inside joints was a bad idea, and not just because it hurt like hell. I took several deep breaths and relaxed my hands. I was exaggerating a little. Unless I was very unlucky it would take more than a trip to cause a major bleed, and maybe if we tried at a different time of day I could manage sex. 

At my last appointment, the doctor walked me through the details of the surgery I'd thought would fix me, get rid of the problem and no more meds. Why hadn't I put in the research before now? I had never particularly trusted doctors before, but somehow having to depend on them for so long had skewed my perceptions. Or maybe I still had some of that Florence Nightingale thing going on. Or I just hadn't listened, my most annoying inner voice supplied.

Whatever the reason I finally saw the situation for what it really was. The meds for life with the side effects and knowing that they could never be one hundred percent effective, that I'd always have a risk of major stroke that was outrageous for my age. Or risk the surgery that they might have to do multiple times before it had any effect with a chance of it never working and a fifty-fifty chance of it coming back within five years and having to do the surgery again. Pushing a needle through the wall between chambers of my heart and burning scars into it with a laser _multiple times_ was a piss poor option. 

It wasn't fair that I'd drawn Nathan this far in without telling him what he was really getting into. He knew something of the fear I dealt with, and he suspected there was more, but this was… was… a freaking _laser_ burning my _heart_. I felt the familiar panic symptoms creeping up on me. I couldn't deny this any longer, but that didn't mean I was good with it. 

I concentrated on slowing my breathing, being in this moment. I got myself under control, but it was so much harder to do with Nathan standing there, wanting to help but not knowing what to do with himself, his discomfort multiplying my own. What if he arrived and I couldn't manage to talk to him? I pulled a scrap of paper from the drawer, and began a note with, "I'm sorry." I stopped. I couldn't do this in a note. I had practiced this. I could do it. I _had_ to do it. I banged the pencil and paper back down on the table, jostling the bottles. I glanced at the clock. It was already almost nine. I had to get to the _Grey Gull_ and open up for my holiday regulars. 

I pulled up to the Gull, and sat staring at the sign for a minute. It needed a new coat of paint. I sighed and dialed Nathan. He answered promptly, but his tone was cool. " _Duke._ "

"Can you come to the _Rouge_ tomorrow morning?"

" _You'll tell me what's going on then?_ "

"Come at 6:30 and I'll show you. Then I'll explain."

" _Duke. Whatever it is, I'm not going to leave you. I'm solid on this._ "

"Have fun today, okay?"

He sighed at the avoidance, but said, "I'll bring breakfast in the morning."

"Sure."

After we hung up, I went inside. I planned to open at 11:00, but I needed to get everything heating up and ready. I didn't serve a full menu on holidays like this. I knew what my regulars liked. Most of them wanted a holiday meal, instead of a TV dinner version at home alone. Profits or no, they all knew I set a low limit on alcohol on holidays. I knew what it was like to be alone when everything was focused on families and togetherness. A hot meal and a little company went a long way toward easing that pain. I couldn't abandon these guys. Besides, who knew what might set off a Trouble in this crazy town? Being here was like a public service.

Then there was Bill Boncombe. Everyday at 11:30 he walked through my door. He ate a cheeseburger with one pickle slice and twenty-five crunchy Cheetos. I'm not even sure he was cognizant of the holiday, and I was pretty sure he just wouldn't eat if I was closed, so part of the day's prep was to count out the twenty-five chips from the big tub I kept just for him. I had no idea where or if he had eaten when the Shaws had the place closed, but Bill Shaw told me which chips to buy when I opened the _Gull_ , and Boncombe hadn't missed a day since. I hadn't ever seen an indication of a Trouble in him, but this was Haven, so I wasn't messing with the guy's routine.

I checked the phone lines, the camera feeds, my pistol in its concealed holster, my holdout in its ankle holster, and the shotgun I kept behind the counter then I went to the door. I didn't unlock it right away. I checked the parking lots through its window first. Looked for shadows coming from the roof. Then unlocked it. Paranoid? I preferred realistically cautious. 

At 11:15 I started cooking Boncombe's burger. I walked out of the back with his plate as he walked in the door. He smiled at me and set exact change down on the bar. I left him alone. He never talked much. 

The rest of the day went much the same. I chatted enough to get conversations started among the patrons and then faded out of them. I couldn't do 'life of the party' anymore. I'd told Nathan about the public service aspect of this. I'd told him I couldn't handle crowds anymore, but I knew that wasn't all there was to it.

At ten, I shooed out the last of my patrons. 

I was tired. It was off-schedule for me to be up this late. I had to skip my sleeping pill to manage it, which meant I was dreading going to sleep tonight. That pill kept the nightmares from taking over. I'd been taking it since about a week after the turtle, and I'd only had three or four nightmares bad enough to wake me, and that without the vomiting, since. 

I stared tiredly at my paperwork. Here I was, dreading going to sleep. Dreading seeing Nathan tomorrow. Skipping out on seeing people that I know wanted to see me, that would have understood if I had to leave early. I could have split the day with someone. One of my wait staff had offered, saying they'd rather have an excuse to get away from the in-laws for half the day. Why hadn't I taken her up on it and gone?

The same reason I dreaded trying to sleep tonight. Guilt. Those people who still had nightmares because of what I'd done to them for the Rev, would they be able to enjoy the holiday?

I sighed. Claire would kick my ass for letting the guilt take charge, and maybe… Maybe it was time to let it go. Yeah. By Christmas I'd be at that party.

I slid the deposit into the safe, and stretched. It wasn't yet midnight, but tomorrow was Friday, and if I made it through my talk with Nathan intact, that meant time to babysit Benny and Katie. I smiled in spite of my gloomy train of thought. They had perfected both running and climbing now, and seemed to have an uncanny knack for knowing when to split off in two directions to keep me from catching them. 

I put on my coat and hat. It was a warm night for late November–about 35 degrees, but a stiff breeze meant it felt much colder. Everything would be deserted as I drove home. I preferred the safety of crowds or at least groups that qualified as back-up. Late nights and empty lots still hit my nerves hard.

The outside camera feeds showed nothing but my Land Rover. The monitor sat in my peripheral vision where movement would attract my attention, and I often glanced at it while working. I peered through the peephole of my reinforced office door, and saw an empty kitchen. At the back door, same routine. Check the peephole. Keep looking for at least thirty seconds, just in case. I opened the door slowly, one hand on the grip of my pistol, ready to draw. The door locked automatically behind me, so I didn't have to turn my back to check on that. 

Audrey wasn't in her upstairs apartment. She had volunteered to take the late night holiday shift at Haven PD. I'd stop by the station on my way home and surprise her–one more way to avoid sleeping tonight. My Land Rover was parked about twenty feet from the back door, with at least twenty feet clear space all around it. The snow that collected on Monday had melted, but left the ground under the gravel slushy. 

A board on the balcony creaked. I drew my pistol as I turned. The pop of the taser registered a second before I felt the hooks bite into my leg. The shock didn't stop after thirty seconds like the modern limited devices. It went on and on with me writhing on the gravel before I finally passed out. 

They were fumbling with my keyring, trying to find the right key to open the _Gull_ , when I woke. Two large men held me by the arms. I couldn't stop a whimper from escaping. _Not again_. One of them chuckled and gave my arm a sharp shake. Six men surrounded me, and one more stood to the side, looking supervisory. The hold-out pistol was gone, but my phone was still in my pocket. No way in hell I'd win this fight, but with a big enough distraction a call for help might be possible.

Stupidity-level bravado might work. "Boys, you'll be dragging my corpse before you get me through that door."

While they were laughing at me, I lunged to the right, ramming my head into the man holding me on that side. He staggered and went down, dragging me and the other guy with him. I jerked my arms free and lurched away. One of them latched onto my foot and I crashed to the cement. The impact snapped my head back and slammed my teeth together, catching the edge of my tongue. 

I kicked blindly at the man holding my foot. Someone else's foot slammed into my ribs. I yelped, but kicked again at the man clinging onto me, and this time felt a connection and heard a grunt. My foot was released. I scrambled upright. Blood frothed in my mouth. I spit it at the only guy standing between me and the corner of the building. The guy doubled over scrubbing at his eyes, and I darted past him. 

I pulled the phone as I rounded the corner. I brought up the call log and redialed the last call–Nathan. A shoulder hit me in the back, taking me to the ground. The guy followed through, all his weight coming down between my shoulders. My vision greyed out as I struggled to drag air back into my lungs. Nerveless fingers couldn't stop the cell phone from being snatched away and unceremoniously stomped to bits.

They yanked me up to my feet. I still hadn't caught my breath and now that I wasn't fighting, my ribs, tongue, and chin all throbbed. Would I feel it if that tackle had started a bleed? _Focus, Duke. They're not going to wait for that to kill you._

"Pay more attention," said the supervisory type. He was definitely the Leader from the way the two holding my arms snapped to attention at his words. They squeezed my arms like vice grips. The one on the right side–Pete for now–shoved his knuckles against my ribs, sending jolts of pain through me. I clenched my teeth, careful of my tongue, and refused to make a sound as they marched me inside. At least the pain smothered the panic. 

"Thought you said it'd be over your dead body?" Pete taunted.

"No way I said something that clichéd." Blood welled over my teeth and down my chin. I spit it at Pete's shoes. My tongue throbbed horribly. _Damn, hope I didn't bite a chunk out of it._ Pete danced away from the blood and shoved his knuckles into my ribs again. 

One of the men had gotten the door open. It was propped wide. Headlights from several arriving cars shone in my eyes. None of these men looked familiar. They weren't from the Rev's kidnapping ring. I had memorized those faces. That left the Guard. They wanted me dead. Likely a quick death; they were too afraid of my family curse to let it drag out for long.

As we moved through the kitchen, the sound of breaking glass and clanging table settings filtered through from the public area. The men ignored my office and the safe. 

"You know it's just insulting that you aren't even trying to make it look like a robbery." 

Pete ground his knuckles into my injured ribs again, and forced me up the hall to the front. Every movement caused the hands gripping my arms to tighten and knuckles to dig into my ribs, so I checked what I could see of the room without moving. Furniture had been shoved aside. The knife set from the kitchen was on the bar. The main door stood propped open. Cold wind drafted through the room. The men from outside were trashing things. Several others, both men and women, seemed to have just arrived and were in the process of removing winter gear. More people were coming inside. A knot of dread formed in my stomach. I recognized the newcomers. 

I had cut them for the Rev. 

Everybody stopped and focused on me.

The Leader stepped forward. "Take your clothes off." 

I started shaking. Couldn't stop it. I'd only just managed to take my clothes off with Nathan the day before. A montage of being left naked and waiting to be tortured played through my mind. This didn't look to be much better. My breathing and heart rate sped up. _Focus. Don't panic. Focus._ Behind the speaker, men dragged three small tables to the center of the room and taped the legs together. I swallowed hard. Quick death wasn't looking so likely, unless they accidentally let me bleed to death. 

I spit another mouthful of blood, this time at the quieter of the two men holding me. The man had shaggy orangish-red hair and wore a maroon jumper that clashed something awful. Jumper looked unsettled by the blood, but didn't retaliate. 

At this point, the hope that the call had connected with Nathan and bravado were all I had. "I don't know what kind of cheap date you think I am, but hell no," I said. My voice projected a hell of a lot more confidence than I felt. I observed Jumper with my peripheral vision. Definitely some remorse there. That could be useful. I was still shaking.

A short, slight man with dark hair stalked through the door, and I froze. The man tossed his coat to the side. He wore a long-sleeved sweater, and thin leather gloves. Acid shot up my throat. _That's not McKee_ , Duke. My mouth dried up and I couldn't swallow. _McKee's dead_. The man marched across the room, a predatory smile on his face. _Not McKee_. The man pulled his gloves off deliberately, finger-by-finger. 

My lungs seized. My heart raced in spite of the medication. The world narrowed to those hands coming closer. All reason left, and I fought, thrashed, writhed. _Away! Back!_ The grips of the men holding me were too strong. I wrestled them backward and into the pile of broken bottles. My feet slid from under me, and my knees smashed into broken glass. I heard the crunch, but numbness disconnected me from my body.

The hands were closer. "No!" _No, no, no, no._ Tingles pulsed over me. Even on my knees I kept thrashing, pulling back, away.

"What the hell's wrong with him?" Jumper shouted

"Just hold him!" 

The voices rang like they were the only sounds in the world. My toes hit the bar. With the leverage, I surged up and forward, breaking the grip on my left side. But spots crowded into what remained of my field of vision. I couldn't move. My arms refused to break the fall.

 

 


	3. Chapter Three

 

 

### 

**Chapter Three**

 

DUKE  


 

"What the hell was that?" Fingers on my throat. "Shit. His heart is beating _fast._ " 

_Move._ Nothing obeyed, not even my eyelids. My face pressed against the wet floor. The smell of mixed liquors burned my nose, but I couldn't move away.

A boot nudged at my ribs, and The Leader said, "Fainted. Hurry up and yank that coat and shirt off before he wakes up and we gotta do all that again."

Work-thickened hands scraped up my ribs, dragging my shirts and coat off. Hands all over me now. _Stop! Please stop!_ In the air, moving. Slammed onto the table. _Open damn it!_ My eyelids didn't budge, leaving me blinded to the hands pulling and tugging and rough ropes scraping over my skin. I couldn't avoid the touches. Couldn't even tense in anticipation.

"You'd think he was scared of Pearson the way he went white when he walked in." Jumper was a talkative bastard for a guy about to help murder a man.

"Coward. Saw the knives, and couldn't face getting what he gave, more like," someone said from near the bar.

My eyes finally opened. The paralysis faded. Ropes held me at chest, hips, knees, ankles, wrists. I yanked frantically, tried to pull some slack, but couldn't even ease the strain on my joints. I stopped. My tongue throbbed and my mouth was full of the metallic tang of blood mixed with stomach acid. Liquor burned in cuts on my knees and legs. _Focus on now. Stay alive until Nathan gets here._ I squashed the answering voice that said the call had never made it through; that Nathan wasn't coming. 

The Leader leaned over me and smiled. Something in his expression struck me as disturbing, even given my current situation, and a shudder ran through me.

The wind gusted and goose bumps prickled over my chest and arms. They hadn't taken my pants. I wasn't naked on the table like the people I cut, and I was grateful for that. _Stop it. They're manipulating you._ I hated it when my inner voice took on the tone of Claire. Were they trying to manipulate me? The classic strategy--give the victim something to make them grateful to you. The problem was, that strategy was damned effective, even with forewarning.

A man and woman walked through the door. As soon as their hats came off, I recognized them as Greg Gunnerson and Margery Wilson. They walked across the room. I craned my neck to follow them, and realized there were only a few missing from my victim list. Someone shut and locked the door. 

The Leader spread his arms and projected his voice like he thought he was some kind of prophet. "Duke Crocker. You have caused injury and harm to these people assembled here. You have escaped punishment by the law. We are here to see that justice is carried out."

I shook my head. "No. No." I twisted against the ropes, chafing my skin. _McKee reaching for me. Karen begging me to cut her. Water over my head–Can't breathe! Knife in my hand. Looking down at the table. Hands shaking. McKee waiting._ I shook my head, tried to slow my breathing. Couldn't hyperventilate. I had to stay focused, couldn't let the memories take me. The Leader was staring at me. Watching with the kind of rapt attention of a boy who has pulled the wings off a fly.

This wasn't fair. Life wasn't fair, but this? I'd kept to myself. I'd been careful not to antagonize the victims. It still led here. I met the Leader's eyes as I said, "I didn't have a choice." I tilted my head back, looking at the rest. Margery Wilson's eyes met mine. "Nobody's forcing you to be here. You don't have to do this."

The Leader stepped into my line of sight. "There is _always_ a choice." Sure that my attention was back on him, he stepped to the side, so the rest could see the show, and spoke louder. "The choice to do nothing and let the evil of injustice fester in the heart of this town, or to lance the boil and let the light of justice cleanse the wounds." He leaned toward me and said, "So no, no one is forcing them to be here. They are choosing to make things right. We're not here to kill you. We weren't even planning on beating you. That's on you for fighting your just punishment."

"So this is what? Eye for an eye?" Behind him, Margery moved closer, looking at me with a terrible fascination. "You can cut me," I said to her. "It won't matter whether you cut me to ribbons or do it measure for measure. This _will_ make it worse." My throat tightened, and I couldn't make the rest of the words come out loud. _Trust me. I know what it's like from the other side. Don't do this to yourself._

Gunnerson crowded the table, his face inches from mine. "You don't get to talk to her. I don't care what Mike says. I will kill you myself." The Leader–Mike–nodded to other men, who dragged Gunnerson back; herded him to a corner. Margery took a knife from Mike and stepped up next to the table.

"You're both wrong. I had no choice while tied to that table." She looked at me, her expression resolute. "I _have_ no choice, and _you_ took that away. I have to take it back or I'll never be free of you."

I swallowed the lump in my throat, and said, "This won't end the nightmare, Margery. It'll just give you a new one." I couldn't stop myself from squirming, dragging the ropes across my skin. My heart raced. I had tied myself to that table a hundred times in my dreams. This was worse. Waiting, not knowing what she was going to do. I had never cut very deeply, tried to hurt them as little as possible, but would she do the same? 

I tried to slow my breathing, finally managing several shaky breaths that at least lowered the pounding of my heart enough that I heard Margery murmur, "You're wrong. This won't be a nightmare. I've been dreaming about this for months." Her arm raised high– _I'm going to die_ –and the knife flashed in the light before she plunged it down.

It didn't connect. Mike gripped her wrist, holding the knife a fraction of an inch above my heart. "This isn't vengeance. This is justice. You cut him like he cut you, or you leave with nothing. You got me?"

Was Mike serious? Did he mean it when he said they weren't here to kill me, or would they just wait until the victims left to kill me? Would calling Mike on it put these others in more danger? The men allowed Gunnerson to get around them. Margery's eyes brimmed with tears, her whole face a mask of agony. It seemed that she had put everything into that one moment. She dropped the knife on me, and turned away into Gunnerson's chest. He wrapped her up in a hug and led her away. 

_Can I simply pay with blood? Justice. Punishment. This is worse than I could imagine. What I deserve. Won't paying for my actions appease my guilt?_ If it happened by making things worse for these people, no. I'd just have another layer of the guilt. Or would I? They chose to walk in here of their own free will. Right? Right?

A boy, the first one I remembered cutting, picked up the knife. He didn't say a word or even meet my eyes. _Just like I wouldn't meet his._ His name was Joe Millway. His Trouble temporarily changed people's appearance–eye color, hair color. Harmless, as Troubles went.

The knife pressed against my skin, denting it, breaking through. I hissed a breath in through gritted teeth. Joe hesitated, stopped moving. He looked at me. The boy was pale, sweaty, shaking. Joe broke eye contact. His shaky hand made the cut a ragged mess across my chest. The boy stared at it as blood flowed down to the table. His face paled even more and he swallowed convulsively a couple of times before he turned and threw up. He straightened and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

Could it really be this simple? No. _But._ But I had to ask, to know for sure. "Joe." The kid looked up, met my eyes. "Forgive me?"

The kid shook his head. "No."

I squeezed my eyes shut and drew in a deep breath. "I understand," I said slowly. "Later on. When you can't stop thinking about this–I understand." The kid shuffled his feet, his eyes drawn back to the blood still flowing freely from the cut on my chest. 

Some of the men led Joe away. The kid was crying, shoulders shuddering, leaning on the guy leading him away, and I felt a surge of empathy with the kid. That wasn't the reaction of someone who really wanted to be here. 

Mike loomed over the table. "You don't understand anything. This is making sure you get what you deserve. And you _don't_ deserve forgiveness." 

I had to play his game. He had gotten these people here. I had to get them out. "You think this is a good idea?" I hissed. "You think that kid isn't going to have nightmares about what it feels like? What did you threaten him with to make him carry through? And Margery. Was this supposed to help her? She's still hysterical over there."

Mike grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked my head back. The knife pressed into the skin of my throat. "You tortured these people. They will carry the scars for the _rest_ of their _lives_ , and you are walking around free, not a scratch on you. I didn't have to threaten them. Just offer them a chance to take back what you stole." His volume rose until the babble in the room, even the sounds of crying from Margery and Joe, had stopped and he had a rapt audience. "All we want is justice." 

He released me and spread his arms wide again. "Justice. For the scars we carry. For the stigma, and the shame. For the cover-up of what you did. If our Chief won't do what's right, by God, we will!"

Murmurs of assent sounded around the room. 

"But we're not like you, are we? All we want is justice. We're not going to use you to feed an addiction. We're not going to kill you. That would be revenge. All you get in return for all the suffering you caused is to wear the same scars you gave. Isn't that right? Justice!"

Shouts of "Justice!" and "That's right!" roared around the room. Mike was one hell of a con man to get all these people behind this. He wasn't even one of the people the Rev had kidnapped. How he was linked to this, and why the others let him include himself in statements like that, I didn't know, but these people were in the middle of a game more dangerous than they understood. Mike dropped his arms to his sides and leaned in close to me.

"That's what I think, Crocker." The look on his face wasn't crazed or gleeful. More...determined, and that thought unsettled me more than anything else. I needed to get these people out. _Can't believe you're playing it so noble for people who want to cut you._ I pushed that shoulder devil thought to the side. This time I had a chance to save them, and I wasn't letting it pass me by.

"Don't make them do it. Send them out. Do what you think you have to. Show them a picture, or better yet, tell them or let them hear it through the rumor mill. They'll think, 'Good. The bastard got what he deserved.' They'll be happy with that. Look at that kid. Really look at him. You've given him new nightmares. He doesn't deserve that. None of them do."

Mike frowned and opened and closed his mouth several times before speaking. "You're not begging me to save your worthless skin. You're worried your victims will have nightmares after facing you."

"Facing me? No. Ask Joe. Sticking a knife into someone is different." I closed my eyes, watching the endless loops of memories and nightmares. They had played so often, I had trouble separating them. _I cut Joe. I was both the cutter and the guy the on the table. I didn't hesitate when told to kill Margery. McKee and the Rev tortured me for refusing._ It jumbled up. If I thought about it, I knew what was real, but I saw them all. Mike was still staring at me, his weirdly intense expression reminding me briefly of Nathan. 

_Nathan_. I swallowed heavily, blocking out my silent plea. I had to focus. "Please. I've hurt them enough." _I'm going to bleed to death. What the hell am I doing?_ Blood from the cuts on my legs soaked into the back of my pants legs. I could feel a trail of it from Joe's cut flowing along the line where my back was pressed to the table. They had to be able to see that the bleeding wasn't stopping, which meant they didn't care how much blood it cost me. There was a choice here. Margery and Joe weren't the only ones willing to make a desperate and probably, in the long run, terribly bad decision to try to regain that control that had been stolen. I looked around the room again. Several people were pale, or showing signs of serious distress. This thing happening here, it wasn't going to help anyone. But maybe if I saved them from becoming… me... maybe I would salvage some of what I lost. _If I live through this, this time I'm not going to live with the guilt._

Mike kept staring at me for a minute. He nodded slowly before saying to Jumper. "Clear these people out."

Sounds of indignation and protest rattled around the room. "If you think you've got the stomach for carrying through without falling apart later, you come here and take a good look. Then decide if you want to stay," Mike said loudly. 

I turned my head away as several of them shuffled up to the table. Someone reached out and rubbed across the cut. I gasped at the sudden burn. It had faded to the background, but that shoved it back into sharp focus. I squeezed my eyes shut. I had made my choice. Now I had to live with it. Involuntary tears leaked from the corners of my eyes.

"No. This isn't it," a woman's voice said. 

I turned my head to see the speaker. A young woman was walking away. Her name was… I should recognize her even from behind–a line of pain traced across my left arm near the elbow. I whipped my head back to that side. A man named Sorenson waved the knife in my face.

"That is _exactly_ it. He's scared now." Sorenson spoke to the remaining three Troubled on my right side. "I can see it in his eyes. How'd you like that, huh? How does it feel to be the one tied down and helpless?" He cut another line below the first. "You were a big man when you were the one with the knife."

I shook my head. I'd gotten the rest out. Nothing else to focus on. Grey spots crept into my vision. Hyperventilating. I had to breathe slower. He was wrong. I hadn't had the power. Had to breathe slower. Couldn't hear. Sorenson's mouth was moving. More lines cut on my arm. I couldn't focus. Couldn't stop–

_Sorenson shrieked when I walked into the room. Yanked on the restraints until his wrists bled. I heard it. Saw it, through the haze. I was watching my body move from over my shoulder. Saw myself take the knife. But I felt the moment the knife punctured the skin. As soon as I pressed the knife through the skin, as soon as Sorenson screamed from pain and not terror, I stopped floating. Dragged back into my body. Weighed down. Muscles strained from McKee's touch, throat raw from screaming, stomach gnawing with hunger. "Touch the blood. Make it go away…"_

The opposite happened now. The more they cut me–and after Sorenson had been pulled away by Jumper, it was all Mike–the less real I felt. I floated. My body wasn't real. Disconnected, I watched Mike cut me through a veil of memories, each one draining away with the blood. Like a dream that didn't end.

I went blank. Not unconscious. Blank. I hadn't gone blank in weeks. Floating in a void, nothing, not even memories followed me here. It felt...safe. Nothing could hurt me here.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra thanks to Roseveare on this chapter. There were a lot of tricky places that really have to be just right in this one.
> 
> It has taken me a ridiculously long time to get this chapter posted, and I apologize. Whoever says stay at home mom's have it cushy... well I kind of want to slap them right now. In three weeks school is out. Then I'll be able to get a more consistent posting schedule going. Thanks for being patient.
> 
> Comments are always welcome and appreciated, even if it's just to tell me that you don't like what I'm doing.


	4. Chapter Four

 

 

 

### Chapter Four

 

DUKE

 

Fingers on my throat pierced the bubble of nothing. Sound followed. "That's fast, boss. Fluttery. He don't look good." Jumper's voice. Fingers tapped my cheek. "Hey. Hey, you in there?" 

My vision stuttered back online. Each blink gave me a still frame. My eyes burned like I hadn't blinked in a long time. The still frames blurred into movement. Jumper leaned over me, shifting side to side, his brows drawn together.

Something in me still clung to the idea of not dying. I swallowed. "Medicine. Coat pocket." My voice sounded like I'd gargled with round glass. 

"You're just trying to get us to give you painkillers," Mike said.

I shook my head. Scents rolled over me–vomit, blood, and liquor "Heart." I swallowed again. The tastes of stomach acid and blood coated my tongue.

Jumper stomped through the broken glass to the bar, the sounds impossibly loud after the quiet nothing. The pill bottle rattled. I tipped my head to watch. The change in perspective felt like the world lurched under me. By the time my sense of balance had caught up, Jumper had his phone out, the Google search logo on the screen. 

After a minute or so, he said, "Heart medicine," and tossed the bottle to Mike. 

Something dripped behind the bar. The only other sounds came from Jumper and Mike. When did everyone else leave? Mike shook a pill into his hand. For just a moment his expression changed, but it was gone quickly, and any thought of analyzing it disappeared when he reached for me. He pushed an arm under my shoulders and pulled me up to semi-sitting. I accepted the pill and drank from the water bottle he held to my lips. 

Mike stepped away before the realization hit me. No restraints. I rotated my wrists and ankles first. The movement brought the pain screaming back. My arms throbbed. I felt other cuts, but the arms drowned them out. The pain was tidal, ebbing and flowing, a new wave crashing over me before I had my thoughts sorted from the last one. Gradually, it dulled into something I could think past. I could hear things being broken and thrown around, possibly in my office. Raised voices in another room worried at the edge of processing, but only added to the sensory overload. It went on a long time. The thought that I should do something worked its way to the front of my mind. Escape. The door was right there. My heart still fluttered and stuttered in my chest. Lethargy pinned me to the table.

Mike walked back into the room and picked up my coat. "Sit up. I'll help you put it on."

I stared at him, mouth open. The guy orchestrated all this, and now wanted to help me get dressed? And the tone of his voice, like we were buddies or something. "...What?" 

"Jones. Sit him up." Jumper looked surly, but nodded, and slid an arm under my shoulders and pulled me up. Mike shoved my feet off the table at the same time. I ended up with my forehead leaning against Jumper's chest waiting for the black spots to fade from my vision. _Can't move too fast. Orth–Orthostatic_...

Jumper pushed me away, breaking my train of thought. He kept a hand on my shoulder to hold me steady. 

My chin pressed sharply into my chest, head too heavy to move. I swallowed. "The hell you doing?" The words slurred. I squeezed my eyes shut, tried to clear the fog.

"Taking you home, so we can fix this." Mike said.

"...Fix this?" My mind was moving at about the speed of cold molasses, but I was pretty sure that wouldn't make sense even if I wasn't foggy.

"It's done." Mike grasped my other shoulder and pushed me more upright. He ducked down into my line of sight and frowned at me. He spoke slower and louder as if that would cause the words to make sense. "It's done." 

I stared at him, my mind refusing to supply any explanation for what Mike was saying. Mike's head tilted to the side, the frown deepening. "You made yourself an outsider by hurting them. You held guilt, shame. They held fear, anger, betrayal that you escaped punishment. You've paid blood for blood. You got what you deserved. It's done."

' _Got what you deserved._ ' I somehow doubted that Sorenson was done being angry. That Margery was done being afraid, or that Joe was any less betrayed. A tremor ran through me, jostling the cuts and I clenched my teeth to keep from groaning.

"We should take him to the hospital, boss. He really don't look too good." Jumper's voice had gotten too loud, like that would add weight to what he was saying.

"Do you _want_ to be arrested?" Mike hissed. He straightened up, one hand still gripping my shoulder in a too-tight grip.

They continued, but thoughts about what Mike had said drowned them out. Forgiveness didn't come through the spilling of blood, whatever Mike thought. Without forgiveness the guilt still belonged to me. As long as I kept dreaming about the rush from the blood, I was the monster. Mike suddenly let go, and it was all I could do to keep from falling on my face. Jumper took the coat and leaned me against his shoulder. He held the coat up. I had nothing left to fight with. Mike said he was taking me home, and _home_ sounded like a magical word right now. I managed to slowly slide my arm into the sleeve. Some of the cuts caught, refreshing the pain.

I pulled myself away from Jumper. I didn't want to appreciate anything from any of these guys. I had to hold on to myself, not let them manipulate me. This wasn't about making sure I was okay, or knowing I wanted to be home. This was finding a place to dump me that would give them time to escape getting arrested.

"That's a lot of blood. Are you sure? What if he has a heart attack or something? He's on _pills_." 

_Stroke is more likely._ Jumper sounded genuinely concerned, and it annoyed me. If he cared this much, why hadn't he spoke up earlier? Why didn't he call an ambulance or make sure I was dropped off at the ER? No. He was just as bad as Mike.

I slid off the table onto my feet. The room spun. I bent over and clutched the nearest support. It was just bad luck that the nearest support was Jumper.

"Whoa. Where do you think you're going?" Jumper said.

"Away." _Anywhere you aren't_. I didn't add.

"You're not going anywhere like that," Mike said. "Come on. We'll drive you."

Mike grabbed my elbow and yanked me upright. A sharp jerk toward the door left my feet behind while the rest of me pitched forward. Jumper caught my other arm and kept me from hitting the floor. Pain scorched across my chest from the drag. My stomach lurched a bare second before I gagged. Jumper eased me down to my knees as the retching transitioned into epic level puking. 

"It's black, man. What is that?" Jumper's voice rose in pitch and the fingers on my shoulder tightened. 

"Blood."

" _Blood_? He's puking _blood_ now?"

"It's old. Oxidized in the stomach. He was spitting blood all over the place earlier. Probably just swallowed a bunch. Don't worry so much, Jones." Mike clapped Jumper on the back, sending a jolt through me.

The tackle. Was Mike right, or had I been bleeding internally all this time? Blood oozed from the re-opened wound on my tongue, adding to the nasty taste in my mouth. I spit it out. My stomach was still roiling, but the heaving had stopped. A piece of glass dug deeper into my knees with every shift of my weight. My heart was still racing and fluttering, and the dizziness hadn't eased any. The two men yanked me to my feet. 

* * *

I opened my eyes. I was on my back, wedged into the rear seat of a small car. My arm was dangling into the floor, pulling the cuts open. With effort I managed to pull my arm up and tuck my hand between my body and the back of the seat. The simple movement left my muscles twitching and protesting like I'd been lifting weights. 

Mike sat in the driver's seat holding the knife up, catching the light. He tilted it side to side like he was watching the light play over it. Jumper opened the passenger door. He put a knee in the seat and leaned over the back to stare at me.

"He's quit twitching. Oh. And awake. You were right, I guess. Fainted again."

"We're running out of time. Get in the car."

"Yeah." The car dipped as Jumper wedged himself in properly. They were silent through the drive. The lethargy hadn't released me by the time the car pulled into the marina. 

The door opened, letting near freezing air whoosh over me. It was probably nearing the low for the night. "Can you do it yourself?" Jumper asked, leaning in close.

I shook my head.

Jumper grabbed me under the arms and hauled me backwards to sitting, leaned against his chest. My skin crawled. _The Rev is gone. The Rev is gone._

"What's taking you so long?" Mike was pacing near the hood of the car.

"Do you want to risk him fainting again? Gotta get up slow."

Mike waved his hand in our direction, "Fine, fine."

Jumper leaned closer, his mouth next to my ear. My breathing sped up and my whole body tensed up. _Not the Rev._ "When we get back to the _Gull_ , I'll sneak out back and call 911. Help will be here in no time." Jumper's voice was smooth and nothing like the Rev's. It helped. A little. 

He hauled me the rest of the way out of the car and slowly stood up. The movement woke me up, and soon I had my feet underneath me. Jumper kept an arm around my waist, holding me upright as I staggered toward the _Rouge's_ dock. We probably looked like friends coming home after drinking too much.

Mike stalked along behind us. The stairs were pretty much all up to Jumper. I didn't have enough left to pick my feet up on the steps. Mike used my key to open the hatch. Jumper hauled me to the bedroom. Mike slapped the knife onto the table beside the bed, shifting the pill bottles. Jumper folded the part of the blanket I wasn't laying on over me before backing out of the room. When I heard the hatch slam and then both of their voices speaking outside, then fading down the dock, I finally breathed a shaky sigh.

I don't know how long I lay there, listening to my heart, wondering if it was really skipping beats or if I just wasn't hearing it right. The medicine started to kick in. Some of it must have absorbed before I puked. The ticking of the clock caught my attention, and I counted out the next minutes while my heart rate slowed marginally and some of the fog and dizziness lifted, but I still felt slow. I struggled out from under the blanket and sat up. If Jumper had been serious about calling for help it would have been here already. I needed to get a phone and call someone. Bathroom first though. 

In the bathroom, I carefully extracted myself from the coat sleeves. Several of the cuts were trailing blood down my chest and arms. Some were only shallow scratches and had managed to scab over. I traced a finger along the one Joe had done. It was inflamed. The edges pulled apart where Joe's hand had shook the worst, and blood still trickled from it. Given the blood thinners I took, it wasn't likely to stop without intervention.

My hand had shook just like that when I cut the kid. I tried to remember what I'd been thinking. What I'd used to make myself do it. Why had I thought there'd ever be a chance of forgiveness? Saying sorry to a broken plate didn't make it any less broken. I didn't deserve it. Would never deserve it. Blood for blood could never bring back that sense of invulnerability that should have been Joe's for years to come. 

Even knowing what Mike was doing, I had fallen for it. I closed my eyes, gripping the counter to hold myself steady. _You're pathetic._ My worst internal voice. It sounded like my mother. _Worthless. Can't even avoid the con you see coming._

Hell with the phone. Hell with it all. A drink. I needed a drink. Maybe a bottle–or two. I hadn't drank since... And the pills had an emphatic 'no' attached to them, especially the emergency use one that I'd taken, though I'd probably puked some of it back up. Right now I didn't really give a damn. I staggered to the galley, already about as steady as a drunk. 

A heavy banging on the door interrupted me before I had downed more than two shots. I was still shirtless, and still oozing blood. _Nathan._ He hadn't come last night, but he was here now. I sagged with relief. I could relax. Finally, relax. 

I lurched over to the hatch and wrestled the door open. "Nathan. I–"

A forearm across my throat cut me off. Sorenson slammed me into the wall and pinned me in place while kicking the door closed behind him. 

"I wasn't finished with you." Sorenson growled. The smell of cheap liquor clouded the air between us.

I clawed at the arm at my throat. Sorenson pulled back and I slid down the wall coughing.

Sorenson disappeared into the galley. The nearest gun was taped under the table. I struggled to my feet and staggered toward it. A shove sent me careening toward the floor, but I caught myself on the ladder near the bedroom. A weight slammed into me, smashing my side against the ladder, before we scraped past it and toppled to the floor near the bed. 

Sorenson's elbow came down on already bruised ribs. His knee smashed my face into the carpet as he crawled over me toward the nightstand. I moaned and pulled my arm in tight against my side. 

Sorenson clutched the nightstand and dragged himself upright, sweeping everything to the floor. The knife Mike had left hit a prescription bottle and the lid popped free. Pills cascaded over the floor. Sorenson picked up the knife.

"Face me, coward!" Sorenson kicked me in the side, lost his balance, staggered back onto the bed. 

I forced my way up again. Sorenson tackled me. We hit the wall hard, knocking the breath out of me. The knife in Sorenson's right hand skittered down my left side from my collarbone to just above the hip where it sunk in. I gasped for air. The pain I knew I should be feeling hadn't registered yet. 

Sorenson twisted his right side away, digging his left shoulder harder into my chest. "Got you good there, Crocker! You even got enough guts to spill?" 

Sorenson leaned back further, head angled down, looking at the knife still buried in my gut. Without his shoulder digging in so hard, I started sinking to the floor. Sorenson took a step back. His foot landed on the lamp from the nightstand, and flew out from under him. He held onto the knife, yanking it from the wound as he went down.

Blood washed over my hip, and the pain finally made it to my brain about the time I slid all the way to the floor. Sorenson hadn't made a move to get up yet. He let the knife fall to the floor and picked up the open pill bottle.

"You're on this shit, too?" he asked, sitting up.

I tried to give him a 'Do you see anyone else living here?' look, because I still felt like I couldn't breathe.

"The doc said if I took these things, that I'd quit seeing it all the time. Quit seeing _you_ around every corner, in every shadow." He picked up the other bottles and looked at the labels. "You were the one with the knife. Why are you fucked up like the rest of us?"

I turned my head. 

Sorenson crowded in, forced me to face him. "Answer me! You didn't have a single cut. You walked in there, took that knife, and cut me. You _smiled_ when you touched my blood. You're the monster." He grabbed a handful of pills. "Why are you on the same shit I am?" He shoved the pills in my mouth, then jumped up, pacing. I spit them out.

"Rev took me five weeks before you."

"So? I saw you tonight. Not a mark on you."

"Lot they can do and not leave a mark." Blood forced its way through my fingers and ran into the carpet.

"Tell me."

I shook my head.

Sorenson scooped the knife up and held it at my throat. "Tell me, or I put a few more holes in your gut."

_Stay alive a little longer. Nathan will be here._ "I didn't want to die. They–" Sorenson went back to pacing, but motioned me to continue. "Drowning first. Then no food. And…" _McKee's dead. He can't hurt you, Duke._ "A pain Trouble. Left no marks."

Sorenson waved the knife at me. "I know that look. You're telling yourself it's over, can't hurt you anymore. You're lying to yourself, man. It'll _never_ stop hurting. Why me? Why did they pick me?"

"They picked people whose Troubles they could control. They wanted to train me to kill for them. They wanted a monster on a leash." My voice rose in pitch. The memories played out in front of me, still nothing but memories. A small push and I'd lose himself in them like I hadn't since before the Rev died.

Sorenson laughed so hard he fell on his ass. "I'm not going to blow the town up–not going to kill everybody, and _that's_ why?"

He stood up again, swaying on his feet. "You know what?" He waved one hand up, sloppily pointing a finger at me. "I've changed my mind. I want you alive. Every time I get to thinking 'bout that table, I'm going to remember this." He shook the pill bottle. "Yeah. I'm going to enjoy knowing you're no better than me." 

I squeezed the stab wound, trying to ground myself. The cabin overlaid my bedroom. Tiny's body oozed blood in the corner. McKee ran his finger over Nathan's face across the room. 

Sorenson barked laughter. He tossed the pill bottle at me. "Know that look. Say hi to the Rev for me."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to Roseveare for the beta work, and comments are always welcome and appreciated, even if it's just to tell me that you don't like what I'm doing.
> 
> Also, school's out for summer!! Whoo hoo! I think I am as excited as the kids this year, maybe more so. Also, we found a violin teacher for the Doomsprout. He's super excited. 
> 
> In other random news, we adopted a tiny kitten who is a bottle baby (less than 13 oz/375 grams), only he won't suck on a bottle, so we have to feed with him with a syringe. He lives inside my toboggan (beanie for those not living in the South). So we've got two jokes. He's our Cat in the Hat, or our Beanie Baby! Although, living where I do, I have to explain how we got the second one to most people here. He likes that hat so much, I'm wondering if I will have to make it into a cat sweater or something once he gets bigger.


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

### 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

NATHAN

 

I paused at the end of the dock to savor the air. It was promising to be a beautiful day for late November. A clean smell blew in on a light breeze, the clear sky was just beginning to lighten in anticipation of sunrise, and as the Chief I was exercising my option to _not_ patrol the shopping madness of Black Friday. No broken toes to deal with this year. Steam rising from the bag of breakfast takeout reminded me that some people cared whether their food was still hot when they ate it, so with one more appreciative breath, I continued on my way.

Duke had finally decided to take the risk of trusting me with what was causing him to hold him back, and the honor of that trust buoyed my mood even more than the beauty of the morning.

But when I stepped onto the deck of the _Rouge_ , something felt off. I wasn't sure what, but something set me on edge, pushed me toward cop mode. I took a few steps down the stairs before I realized that the hatch to the living quarters was ajar. Duke would never leave it open like that. 

I set the drink tray and food on the nearest surface, and drew my pistol. A few steps closer and I saw that blood streaked the door frame. I started to rush in, but checked myself. Someone could still be inside, and if things went badly I'd need back up. It took a terse fifteen seconds to make a call to Laverne to let her know I was checking suspicious activity at the _Cape Rouge_. The cop in in me appeased, I opened the hatch. I held myself back for the time it took my eyes adjust to the dimness before entering. Blood drops trailed along the walkway and smeared the wall. I could hear my heart pounding. The silence pressed against me, dragged at me. My steps slowed the further I progressed into the room. 

Broken glass and a mostly empty bottle of whiskey littered the floor. Spilled liquor assaulted my nostrils, but couldn't completely cover the metallic tang of blood. More blood stained the steps of the ladder near the bedroom. I stepped into that doorway, and scanned the room. 

I found Duke sitting propped up in the corner between the bed and the door to the closet. His limbs sprawled loosely. His shirt was gone. Blood and something else, possibly vomit, covered his exposed skin. A bloody knife was close to his left hand, and pills were scattered nearby.

" _Duke_?" I shouted. Duke's eyes were open, staring at nothing. He didn't move, didn't blink. "No." I shook my head. I wasn't seeing this. I holstered the Glock. I should…should... I took a deep breath and scrubbed my hands over my face. I had to be sure.

I staggered on the first step, caught myself, and ran the final steps to Duke's side. I kicked away the knife. I couldn't check for a pulse...but was that...did his chest move? I watched. Yes. The movement was shallow and slow, but there. 

"Duke!" I grabbed a spot that wasn't bloody and shook him.

Duke blinked slowly, but his eyes remained focused on the distance. 

There were partially dissolved pills dribbled down Duke's chest, mingled with something dark and gritty, almost like coffee grounds. I grabbed the bottles. What had he taken? An ambulance. I needed to call an ambulance. I fumbled my cell onto the floor, because I was still watching Duke breathe instead of looking at the phone. I pressed my hand into the carpet trying to pick up the phone and blood squelched up. 

I pulled my gaze away from Duke, got the phone open and dialed. 

Laverne answered, "Haven PD. What is your emergency?" 

I went to the bathroom for clean towels as I talked. "Laverne, it's Nathan. I need an ambulance at the _Cape Rouge_. Duke's lost a lot of blood. He's breathing. Possible overdose. Also, get a team out here ASAP to collect evidence." I came back flipping on light switches.

"I'll tell them to to hurry, sweetie," Laverne said, and hung up. 

With the lights on, I saw...blood. I wrapped towels tightly around Duke's arms. There had to be older wounds under there somewhere. The blood in the galley and bathroom had dried. These small wounds couldn't be that old and still bleeding.

I folded another towel and pressed it against the wound to his side. A shudder ran through Duke, and he gasped. He looked at me for a moment. There was pain and confusion, but no recognition in his expression.

"Sorry, I know it hurts." I kept talking. I didn't even know what I said, just trying to keep up a stream of sound to ground him.

Duke's eyelids slowly closed and he started shivering. I had no idea what the temperature was in here. It was about thirty degrees outside according to the Weather Channel. Was Duke shivering from actual low temperature, blood loss, or the pain? It didn't matter. I yanked the blanket off the bed and tucked it around Duke's body the best I could, keeping in mind how much force I was exerting on the wound. 

My fingers brushed against Duke's face as I pulled the blanket up around his shoulders. Duke flinched, his whole body jerking away. I yanked my hand back. I knew better than that.

"Duke. It's Nathan. You're safe now."

Duke's eyelids snapped open, his eyes darting back and forth, never landing on anything long enough to have actually seen it. His body twisted, trying to escape. 

I pulled the blanket down and captured Duke's left hand as it dragged furrows through the bloody carpet. I grasped his hand and forearm and pulled them in tight against my chest. There was no resistance against my grip. Duke's eyes were still bouncing around. 

"Duke. Look at me. Right here."

Duke closed his eyes and drew in several shaky breaths before saying, "Nathan?" His whole body tensed waiting for the answer.

"Yeah. It's me."

Duke fell forward into my grasp, arms curling desperately to close me in a hug.

I checked that I could keep up the pressure on the wound like this. It reminded me of the cabin months ago in the midst of the nightmare created by the Rev and McKee, the awkward angle and Duke's bony knees between us. The damp patch where Duke's face had been pressed against me that I had seen in the mirror as Duke reached out and asked me to stay. This wasn't a silent leaking of tears. I could see the shudders running through Duke's stomach. I heard the sniffling, hitching breath, and small whimpers. Duke wasn't just crying, he was sobbing, and I had no idea what to do other than not let go. 

I heard the siren in the distance. The tension in Duke's muscles eased and his fingers slipped from my neck. The sounds of crying lessened.

"Duke. The paramedics are almost here."

Duke's arm slid back to the floor. 

"What happened, Duke?" 

Silence. His face was still pressed against my shoulder. I needed to see. See that I was still keeping pressure in the right place and that his chest was still moving. I pushed him gently back to the wall. His eyes were closed and his head lolled against the corner.

"Hey. No. You keep your eyes open. How many pills did you take, Duke?"

Duke's brows furrowed and he sat up straighter. His eyes opened, but still bounced around, not as wild as before, but not settling on anything. "Wha' time is it?"

"Almost 6:30. What did you take, Duke?"

"Not yet. Take 'em at eight." The slur in his voice thickened, but at least he was still talking.

I wanted to shake some sense into him, except this was too important. I spoke slower. "Duke. How many of these did you take last night?"

Duke sagged. "'M s'rry, Nathan."

I could hear the paramedics on the deck now. 

"In here!" Quieter I said, "Duke?"

Duke's eyes were drifting shut again. 

I allowed the paramedics to push me back. I kept backing away until I bumped into the wall. They immediately set to work on him, putting a collar around his neck and bandaging the still bleeding wounds. Duke answered their questions about as well as he had answered mine, which wasn't particularly helpful. They put an oxygen mask over his face and heart monitor leads on his chest. His blood pressure read too low; heart rate too fast. He nodded when they asked if he had been drinking. I looked at the bottles scattered around the floor. I picked up the one that was open. A yellow label warned against alcohol. 

One of them got the board ready while the other worked on starting an IV. I tore my gaze away. Made myself look critically at the room for hints of what had happened. A scrap of paper stood out among the pill bottles and other detritus from the side table. I picked it up. It was crumpled and bloodstained.

The handwriting was unmistakably Duke's. _I'm sorry_. My vision blurred. I blinked and it cleared. I scrubbed at my eyes with the cuff of my shirt. Duke didn't do this. Someone _made him_ write that, and _someone_ was going to have my gun jammed so far down their throat they couldn't fucking breathe.

"Sir?" I realized after a moment that the paramedic was speaking to me. "Are you Dwight Hendrickson? Do you know Mr. Crocker's prescriptions and medical history?"

I looked again at the bottle in my hand, and then at the several other bottles scattered on the floor. This was what Duke had wanted to show me. I couldn't help at all. What did Fluoxetine even do? I shook my head. "No. I didn't know about any of this. Dwight?" 

"Medic alert tag." She pointed to a leather strap with a small metal plate around one of Duke's ankles. 

I shook my head. I had never seen the medical alert tag. The only time I'd seen Duke without his pants was Wednesday, and it wasn't there then. 

"Anything else you can tell us?"

"I found him just before I called for help." Duke's eyes were still closed and his body limp. The only indications of life were the the slight condensation on the inside of the Oxygen mask and the beeping of the heart monitor. He looked lost among the medical paraphernalia. "He did wake up enough to recognize me, but he wasn't giving useful answers."

She quickly gathered the other bottles into a bag, before taking the open bottle from me. "We'll take good care of him," she said before she turned to help her partner finish securing Duke to the board. 

They had cut his pants off. Narrow lines of bruising ran across his thighs and shins, and glass had been ground into his knees and shins. _They put him on his knees_. I relaxed my fist, hopefully before I cut my palm, and shoved the anger somewhere controllable. Duke needed me to be functional right now. The paramedics covered him with a blanket and piled the equipment on the board with him. 

A wave of helplessness buried the anger of a few moments ago. This was the second time in less than six months I had seen him strapped to a rescue board deathly still. I gasped for air, the supply in the room suddenly inadequate. 

I had to pull myself together. I managed a deep breath and said, "I'll call Dwight. You're going to Haven General?" 

The two shared a look, but it was the man who spoke. "To be stabilized." They lifted him and threaded their way through the tight corners of the cabin.

"He might be moved after that?" I asked.

"We can't answer that," the man said.

"But Mr. Hendrickson should come quickly," the woman added.

I followed them out, numbly. On the deck, numbered tags formed a trail to the hatch. Stan was busy snapping evidence photos. Rafferty was pacing the deck in a grid pattern. Owens and Miller were doing the same thing at the end of the dock. I had good people in this department. They had gotten here and started fast.

"Uh, Chief?" Stan stopped me. "Someone stepped in some of this. That trail leads inside."

I slowly turned toward Stan. I hadn't even noticed the blood on the deck. I needed to… I opened my mouth to give orders, but nothing came out. 

"Sir?" 

I closed my eyes for a moment to center myself. I couldn't be out of control angry, but I couldn't shut down either. I still couldn't decide what I'd just seen. Those lines of bruising on his legs had to mean that he had been tied down. Probably there were more lines on his upper body that I hadn't seen through the blood. He couldn't have cut himself that many times. Not so precisely. Someone had hurt Duke, but he'd been drinking and the pills… Had they forced them on him, or was this attack one push too far, the last straw? I shook my head. I couldn't accept that Duke had tried to kill himself. I needed to prove that he hadn't, but where to start? _The glass_. There wasn't nearly enough broken glass inside the _Rouge_ to tear his knees and legs up like that, so I needed to find the second scene. 

"We'll have to exclude EMS. I'll send Miller with them with a kit. Once you're finished collecting evidence, see if you can get a copy of the marina security footage. The scene in there can't explain all of the injuries. I'm going to backtrack, starting at the _Gull_." 

"Yes, sir."

"I brought the food and drinks over there. I'll get prints of my shoe treads when I get back to the station. The rest of mine are on file. I know I spread blood to the bathroom cabinet door and the light switches in the bedroom and bathroom. Maybe the wall near where Duke was sitting and directly across from him."

Stan jotted the info down in his notebook and went back to work. I walked back down the dock. The day was still beautiful, but every moment I had spent enjoying it, delaying my arrival to the _Cape Rouge_ , crowded my mind. I pushed the thoughts to the side. Duke needed me to focus.

"Miller."

"Yes, Chief?"

"I want you to follow those guys, gather exclusions on them. Stay at the hospital, and keep watch until you're relieved."

"Yes, sir." Miller trotted off after the ambulance crew. 

I pulled my phone from its case to call Dwight. The number pad had bloody fingerprints. My hands looked like I had dipped them in Duke's blood. I needed to wash it off. The spigot near the parking lot should work–

"Owens!"

"Yes, Chief?" The woman stopped in her tracks and looked at me.

"There is a spigot near the parking lot. You know where I am talking about?"

"Yes."

"Check it for evidence and prints. It's the most convenient place off the boat to wash up."

"Yes, sir. I'll head there now."

The Gull was the last place Duke had been seen the day before, so it was as good a starting point as any. I had cleaning wipes in my truck, those would have to do for my hands for now. I had gotten as far as starting the Bronco when I realized that I needed to call Dwight.

The man answered on the first ring. " _Chief_?"

"Dwight. Duke is on his way to the ER right now."

" _What happened?"_ I hadn't been sure what the other man's reaction would be, but he sounded the same as he ever did. 

"Someone attacked him. Cut him pretty bad. He lost a lot of blood."

" _Where are they taking him?"_

"General. Dwight, he may have tried to overdose on something. There were pills partially dissolved in vomit. He was drinking. They found the medic alert bracelet. They wanted to talk to you."

I could hear Dwight moving around in the background. The dinging of a open car door sounded through the phone. " _I'm on my way to the hospital now. Call me if you need my help_."

He paused. I almost moved to disconnect the line when Dwight said, " _He didn't try to kill himself, Nathan. Find who did this_." Then the line went dead. 

I set the phone down and gripped the wheel so hard that it creaked. Dwight was closer to Duke than anyone these days, and even though that still rankled somewhat, the conviction in Dwight's voice was something I could hang on to. I needed that right now.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So what do you think now that Nathan has finally arrived?
> 
> Also, apparently I am only able to get one chapter a month edited. I'm sorry this is going to be so long in getting the whole thing posted.
> 
> As always thank you to Roseveare for the beta work.


	6. Chapter Six

 

 

###  ****

Chapter Six

 

NATHAN

 

Driving was dangerous enough for me without being lost in thought. I forced myself to focus on nothing but the mechanics of driving until I pulled into the _Grey Gull's_ empty parking lot. No employees were parked in the back lot, either, I called Laverne and asked her to dispatch an available officer to pick up the bar manager, Tracy Garrick, and her keys.

Then I allowed myself a moment. Dwight's conviction that Duke wouldn't have tried to take his own life was total, but I couldn't stop myself from wondering if I had missed something lately. What would it take to push Duke over that edge?

 _If I hadn't wanted more would it have come to this?_ I shook my head. _Duke didn't try to kill himself. Couldn't have._ I got out of the truck, resolved to find evidence of what really happened. Duke had picked up that glass somewhere, but a whisper of a thought still went through my mind that whatever happened before the Rouge, Duke had gone home and started drinking.

A glint of light caught my eye. A pocket knife stuck up out of the gravel. It was large for a pocket knife, nearly five inches. The handle was textured bone, with polished metal at either tip. One of the blades had a large hook for cutting lines. I knew it was Duke's before I bent close enough to see the letter C etched into one end. I almost picked it up, then sighed. If I was going to find the people responsible, then I had to do this right. I took my crime scene kit from the back of the Bronco and put a number beside the knife, then photographed it and placed it into an evidence bag. 

While I was waiting for the keys to arrive, I started to walk around the building to check the perimeter. The doors opening onto the dining room were all locked, and the shades were down all the way around. I couldn't find a big enough gap to get a good look inside. I snorted with frustration, but continued around the building, maybe whoever did this had left that door unlocked. 

Near the back corner almost under Audrey's balcony, I found the remains of a cell phone. I remembered teasing Duke about having a Tinkerbell sticker on a bright red phone just a couple of days ago. _"Katie gave me that sticker, Nathan!"_ No way there were two people walking around the _Gull_ with a phone like that. I numbered and photographed the phone and then sealed it into an evidence bag. I also photographed and sampled some nearby blood. 

Near the back door I found more blood. Drips in front of the door, and a splatter pattern fanning out from near the door toward the corner I had just come around. A void in the center of the pattern told me that something had been removed, likely a person. The pattern could have been created by the cast off of a blunt object, but it didn't seem quite right to me. It fanned out, with large heavy drops near the door, and much smaller drops, almost down to a mist on either side of the void. I took pictures from several different angles, if Duke couldn't tell us what happened here--he might not remember the details clearly--we could try to recreate the pattern later. I catalogued the rest of the evidence and moved on to the door itself.

I dusted the door for prints and collected more than I thought I would for a time of year when most people wore gloves. I put the evidence in a box in the back of my truck, and checked my watch. It had been over an hour since I called for Tracy Garrick to be picked up. If she didn't make it soon, I was breaking in. 

I climbed up onto Audrey's balcony for an overall view of the scene. There was some broken vegetation at the edge of the lot. I started to go down to check it out, but my phone rang.

"Wuornos."

 _"It's Stan. We've finished the initial sweep of the Cape Rouge. There was no evidence of disturbance except in the stateroom. Owens finished the dock and Duke's vehicle. Rafferty and I are still collecting from the cabin of the_ Rouge."

"Good work. We've got another scene at the Gull. Tell Owens to secure the scene over there. You and Rafferty head here when you've finished."

The sound of a door opening behind me made me groan, I hadn't meant to wake Audrey, since she'd been up most of the day yesterday and all night.

"What did you find so far?" I asked Stan, deliberately not looking at Audrey's door yet.

_"There are passive drip trails and there are transfers and the pool of blood where he was found. The drip trails are a mess. They've been stepped in, tracked all over. We can't tell right now if any of the shoe prints were made prior to your arrival. The directional tails that are intact are a jumble, like he moved around the cabin for a while, dripping blood. Or someone did. There's quite a bit on the sheets, soaked into the mattress. He was definitely there for a while. The bathroom is a mess. We found a coat in there with dried blood and then fresher blood on top of that. There was an altercation that ended in the bedroom with him stabbed standing against the wall. He slid down the wall and judging by the pool of blood stayed there until EMS moved him."_

"Thanks for the update, Stan." I hung up the phone and turned to face Audrey. She gasped, and immediately she was close enough to touch and her hands were searching my chest. "What are you d–" I looked down and realized Duke had rubbed blood all over me. Someone could have mentioned that earlier. "No. No, Audrey. I'm fine. It's not mine."

She stilled, but I thought it was more because she had finished than based on what I said. She looked wary, dreading any answer that could be attached to this much blood. "Whose is it?"

"Duke." She wasn't going to like this answer much better. "He was stabbed last night. He's at the hospital. Dwight was heading over there earlier, so he should give us updates. I didn't mean to wake you."

"Didn't mean to wake me? Seriously, Nathan?"

"You were up all night. You need to sleep."

"There is no way I'm sleeping. It's Duke. Of course I want to help. I just need work clothes." She took a step back, "Why were you here if he was stabbed on his boat, and you didn't want to wake me?"

"It wasn't just a stabbing. It looks like the incident happened in two phases and the first didn't happen on the _Rouge_."

She half-turned to go back inside, but stopped abruptly. She faced me, and met my eyes. "'Looks like?' He didn't tell you? How bad is it, Nathan?"

I hung my head for a second. "He was barely conscious, couldn't answer anything and just..." I shook my head. "Blood everywhere."

"He was stabbed?"

"And cut all over. Arms, chest, and stomach."

"We've seen that before."

I nodded. 

"But he's going to be fine, right?"

"I don't know. It was bad, Parker."

She stared at me for a second. "And you weren't going to bring me in on this?"

It dawned on me that I would have been pissed if this had been a friend, and she hadn't wanted to wake me. I shrugged apologetically.

She nodded. "I won't be long getting dressed. Then we'll figure this out." 

After the door closed behind her, I looked down at my shirt. It was definitely time to change. I kept a bag in the Bronco, so I quickly changed, standing in the open door of the truck. As I was struggling with the buttons of the clean shirt, I remembered that break in the foliage. I went to check it, but before I got there I heard vehicles crunching over the gravel. Tracy parked near where I had found Duke's knife, and Officer Tatum pulled in just behind her. Parker was just coming down the stairs, so I turned back to the restaurant. 

Tracy unlocked the kitchen door. I peeked inside. Immediately inside, everything seemed normal. Duke's office door was open.

"Tracy? Does he normally leave his office door open?" I asked.

She looked startled. "Never. Not since he got back after being sick." The emphasis she placed on sick made it clear she thought it had been a Trouble. Most people did.

"Alright. Thank you. Wait with Officer Tatum." 

She nodded and Tater directed her away from the door. Audrey and I cautiously moved further through the kitchen. A peek inside the office revealed chaos. Papers and office supplies strewn everywhere. The desk drawers had been dumped and thrown on the floor, the monitors turned over or broken, and the safe was open and empty. 

"Do you think someone was angry, or looking for something?" Parker asked quietly.

"Or trying to make it seem like they were."

We continued through the kitchen. I didn't believe we'd find anyone, but we had to clear the building. "I can smell alcohol. And vomit." I frowned as another scent burned my nose. "And bleach."

"Could have had a drunk in here last night," Audrey said. We stepped into the main room. "Or not." 

We surveyed the damage. Most of the bottles that had lined the shelves behind the bar were smashed on the floor both in front of and behind the bar. The tables had been shoved around, some overturned, some broken. The first impression of the place was that there had been one hell of a bar fight. Blood had been smeared around the floor with a mop. The bloody mop and bucket of water were still in one corner. 

"Nathan," Her hand wavered slightly as she pointed to a shirt in the midst of the broken glass. "Duke was wearing that when I saw him yesterday." 

It looked brittle with dried blood. Duke's blood. How much had he lost last night? How much could a person lose and still end up okay? I tasted stomach acid at the back of my mouth and swallowed several times trying to settle the unfelt rebellion in my stomach. 

I shook the thoughts away and focused on the room. There were answers here. I just had to find them. Near the front door, under a jumble of chairs, there was a pile of something that looked like wet coffee grounds and smelled like vomit. "Have you seen something like this before?" I asked. "Duke had something like that on him this morning."

Her expression grew pinched. "Blood. If it sits in the stomach for a while, the stomach acid oxidizes it, makes it look like that. I saw it on a case a few years ago."

"So how many non-Troubled causes are there for vomiting old blood?"

"A lot. Most of them really not good. If Duke was vomiting blood here, why would he go home? Why not call an ambulance? There were no disturbance calls last night in this area. You'd think the Coopers would find at least one holiday to either get along or just avoid each other, but breaking them up was the only call I got last night. If there were a fight like this, Duke would have called for help."

I squatted next to a table that was still standing upright. and found confirmation of one of my earlier guesses. I lifted the end of the blood stained rope that was still tied to the table leg and sighed. "Unless he couldn't."

"So all this was a cover-up of what really happened. A hasty cover-up that won't really be good for anything but delaying us. They've tried to bury us under a mountain of evidence. It could take weeks just to sort through this mess, and if it comes down to DNA we're months away from getting answers. What made you come over here in the first place?"

"Broken glass. There wasn't enough on the _Rouge_."

"What do you mean?"

I stepped over the pile of glass in front of the bar. It only took a few seconds of looking to find blood mixed in it. "Someone forced him onto his knees in the glass. It was ground in, pieces still stuck in him. On his _knees_ , Parker. Just like the Rev did." I pointed to the shirt. "They took his clothes. Tied him to a table. Cut him. What does that sound like?"

"How many of the kidnappers are left?"

And she had hit the problem. "None that I know of."

"The only other group that would know about the details would be the other victims."

"But they wouldn't know about the kneeling. We must have missed some of the Rev's men. Duke was never able to verify the numbers." 

Parker put her hand on my arm. I couldn't feel it through my sweater, but the gesture still caught my attention. "We'll find who did this."

I nodded tightly, then turned away to examine Duke's office. 

Behind me, Parker called out, "I'll get Tater started on crime scene, then?"

"Just have him secure the scene. Stan and Rafferty will be done on the _Rouge_ soon. I'd rather have them collecting."

Parker stood in the doorway, cataloguing the damage. "Video logs might still be intact. We'll have to check the hard drives for damage." She wrinkled her nose at the state of the computers. "We need to call in George."

"He's in Portland for the weekend. It'll take a while to get him in."

My phone rang. A check of the caller ID revealed Vince's name. I showed Parker before I answered. 

_"Nathan. Do you have Duke?"_

"What?" Not what I'd been expecting. I could understand rumors of Duke being in the hospital getting to Vince already, but it sounded like he thought Duke was missing.

_"Dwight's not answering his phone, either. There was a package left at the Herald. Duke's in trouble. We all are."_

"Duke's at Haven General. Dwight's there."

_"Oh thank goodness. It reads like they might have..."_

I was back on the _Rouge_ , the smell of blood overwhelming my senses, in that moment that I first spotted Duke sprawled in the corner, eyes open and fixed on nothing. That instant the world dropped out from under me as I realized I couldn't even check for signs of life rebounded through my brain. "What was in the package?"

 _"Pictures. A letter. You need to see this."_ Vince sounded unsettled, and that was, in itself, unsettling.

"Can you bring it to the _Gull?_ We've got a scene down here."

_"We'll be there shortly. Be careful, Nathan."_

I glared at the computer, my heart pounding in my ears, and fought the urge to kick it into unrecognizable bits. "They took pictures."

"Who? Vince and Dave?"

I shook my head. "The people who did this. They've sent a package to the _Herald_ that has Vince rattled, Parker."

"I didn't even know that was possible. What was in the package?"

The urge to destroy something was sliding back under the surface. Duke deserved having this done right. I had to process the crime scene before falling apart. "Pictures. A letter. He's bringing it down here."

"Well that's not ominous at all." 

"Exactly."

Parker pointed at a keyring barely visible in the debris near the safe. "Are those Duke's keys?"

I snapped a picture of them _in situ_ before shifting them around enough to see the Land Rover key. "Yeah. His truck is at the marina, though. We need to find out if he opened the Gull yesterday."

"He did. I saw him about noon when I left for the party."

"Did he say anything unusual?"

Her face scrunched up for a second. "I didn't talk to him. I saw him through the window. Waved." She rubbed her forehead. "I should have talked to him."

I opened my arms to offer her a hug. She stepped into it. I gave her a brief squeeze then released her. 

She gripped my arm and stared into my eyes. "We'll figure this out and get these guys, Nathan." Then she moved back reluctantly and surveyed the room again. "You said he called you yesterday, right?"

"About 9:30 in the morning. I thought he sounded fine then. Said he wanted me to come over at 6:30 this morning."

I snapped pictures of the safe, then examined the lock and door. It looked undamaged. I glanced around the room, and noticed that it was one of the only things that hadn't been broken. It was empty.

Parker was looking at the safe thoughtfully. "Why even bother opening the safe? How much money could he have made yesterday?"

I straightened up. "Not much. He said he only had a few regulars that he opened for. There probably wasn't much more than a hundred dollars in there."

"They could have left Wednesday's deposit in, since the banks were closed yesterday. I think the robbery is incidental." Parker backed out of the tiny office.

"Uh huh. Part of the cover-up. I'll go question Tracy about these regulars, and the money. We need to fill in the timeline between noon yesterday and 6:20 this morning."

Parker nodded. "I'm going to take a better look around out there." She turned and walked slowly back toward the public areas of the _Gull_.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the next chapter. Thanks, as always to my beta, Roseveare. 
> 
> I hope you all enjoy reading this, and, of course, I love all the comments I get.
> 
> Also, school is back in session, and my middle kid is back on the bus! Sports practices are after school, and the youngest's appointments are consolidated into fewer days. So much, much less running around, which will hopefully translate into more writing happening. Fingers crossed and all that.


	7. Chapter 7

 

# 

**But I Have My Life**

 

### 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 

NATHAN

 

Back outside, I found Tracy standing near her car. She was rubbing one arm, staring absently at the back door of the _Gull_. I was next to her before she reacted to my approach. 

"Oh! Chief Wuornos. What's happened to Duke?"

I grimaced in apology as she recovered from the brief start. "We're trying to work that out. Do you know which customers would have been here yesterday?"

She lifted her hand to her mouth and her expression grew pinched. "Is Duke all right?"

I touched her shoulder. "He's hurt. He's being cared for. I need your help with who would have been here yesterday."

She swallowed heavily, but nodded. "I never thought any of them would seriously hurt anyone. Do you have a piece of paper?"

I handed her my notepad. 

"Well, he wasn't opening until eleven, so first guy should have been Boncombe." She stopped mid-way through writing the name, and looked up at me. "What are we going to do about Boncombe?"

"What do you mean?"

"He's… on a schedule," she looked at me, like that should make sense to me. "He's here every day, same time, same order. We keep a special tub of chips for him. Have to count them out exact."

"There's no way to go in there today. He'll just have to go somewhere else."

She raised an eyebrow at me, "Okay." The O was drawn out enough that I could tell she thought I was wrong, but she went on and I lost the thread. 'I'll just finish writing the others I expected down, then. Most of them will probably show up here sometime today, if they don't hear about it being closed first. Some of these guys practically live here." She handed me a list with twelve names on it.

"Thank you. Is there anything you can think of in the last few days that was out of place? Anyone stand out as unusual?"

She thought for a minute, but shook her head. "Everything's been really normal lately. Well, Duke's been staying up front, working the bar more often recently, but that's…" she shrugged.

He had been making real progress lately. I swallowed against a sudden taste of bile in my mouth, and continued. "Do you know if the Wednesday deposit would have been in the safe?"

She nodded. "Yeah. My closer leaves them in the safe, and I take them the next day after my shift. Duke was going to be here all day by himself, so I don't know when he would have had a chance to take it."

"Any idea how much could have been in there?"

She shrugged. "It'll be in the books. A lot of people pay with cards, so a big deposit day is maybe five hundred in cash and checks. I haven't been in yet since my shift ended Wednesday, so I don't know for sure."

"Who closed up on Wednesday?"

"We only have one other closer with a key, Carissa Bailey. Duke doesn't want a lot of keys out there." She motioned for the paper back and added the name and number. "She'll know the amount, at least to a round number." 

"Thank you for your help. We'll have more questions for you later in the investigation, but for now you can get back to your family if you want." Her eyes drifted toward the _Gull_ as I continued to talk. I tried to look reassuring as I handed her a card with my cell number on it. "If you think of anything else that might help, give me a call." 

She took it and nodded. I waited until she had gotten into her car before I pulled my phone out. I had wiped it down, but blood still stained the cracks of the number pad. It had been almost two hours since they'd taken Duke away. I needed to know that he was… 

I wasn't sure if Dwight would have his phone on or not—he hadn't answered Vince—but he'd see a text eventually. I asked for info and left it at that. My part in this was to catch the bastards responsible. I headed back inside to see what Parker had found.

I found her bent over examining the legs of one of the tables, not the one with the rope. "Parker?"

"I found tape residue on two legs of the table with the rope. And on the table I marked over there. This one has residue on all four legs, and I just found a partial print in it."

I looked. The print was clear and included some of the center details. It probably wasn't enough to make a definitive match, but it would narrow it down. "Good work, Parker."

"Did you get anything out of Tracy?"

"A list of regulars she thought should have been here yesterday, and the name of Wednesday night's closer. Couldn't think of anything unusual in the last few days. I sent her home until we know more."

"They smeared the blood with the mop and bleach." She stepped toward the center of the room where the smearing was worst. Tables and broken chairs had been scattered over the area. "But they only really tampered with this section of the floor. They left the glass–and the blood in it–over by the bar. Duke's blood covered shirts are here and there's vomit by the door. They didn't attempt to clean up _anywhere_ else but this section of the floor. What I want to know is why."

"They could have run out of time."

She gestured at the broken furniture. "They did this _after_ they smeared this area with bleach. If they had time for that, then they had time to mop the rest of the floor."

"Hmm."

"They're either incompetent or there was something right here they didn't want us to see."

I tried to picture the scene last night. The three tables Parker had found, taped together and placed here in the center of the room, with Duke tied down. Something didn't quite add up. "There's blood on Duke's shirt."

"Yeah." 

I motioned her over to the shirt bundle. It was near the pile of glass. 

I took a picture with a numbered marker before moving anything. Flattened out, it was clear the bundle of shirts had no rips or cuts. "If they tied him to the table, this had to be off first. His arms and chest were covered with cuts. Nothing I saw this morning could have gotten this blood here without cutting the shirt."

"Bloody nose? They had to do something to subdue him enough to tie him up."

"Would have been one hell of a bloody nose, and his upper face was about the only place on him that _wasn't_ bloody." The room wobbled and I caught the edge of the bar to keep my balance. There was still blood along the edges of my fingernails, visible even through the latex gloves. I closed my eyes. _The blood welled up over my hand with a sucking sound_. Parker's voice cut through the image. 

"Even if most of it does belong to Duke, a struggle is good for transferring evidence." 

"True. I'll mark this as a priority for the lab."

We were going in circles. This was as useless as... "He was wearing a medical alert tag on a band around his ankle."

"And you didn't know about it?" Her voice had shifted to the tone she normally saved for soothing an out of control Trouble. 

I sighed. I had to control myself better than this. "I think it's what he wanted to talk about this morning. He had a bunch of pill bottles out. He'd made sure I had never seen them before, and—" 

A sudden sensation in my hand startled me. I looked down and saw Parker smoothing her hand over my wrist. I relaxed my grip on the bar until the veins subsided in my hand. 

"It's hard to try to investigate something you're this close to."

"There's no one else to turn it over to. Not like we can call in outsiders."

"I know. Just concentrate on what we see. Do the police work, and we'll get them."

I pulled my hand free. It was hard enough to concentrate without that sparking on my attention. "Let's go outside. I need fresh air." As we walked, I said, "Okay. Timeline."

"I talked to him about nine. He opened up sometime before 11:30. You saw him after 12:00. There are regulars that routinely stay until he shoves them out the door at closing time. " 

"Holiday hours, and he was by himself, so closing had to have been much earlier than normal." 

"Unless his regulars were involved in this, I think we can assume that he was safe until after they left. "

She shrugged. "Unless we find something that contradicts that, it's a pretty safe assumption."

"I found him shortly after six this morning. I didn't ask him when he was closing. I just know he was going to be out much later than six."

"Right. The six o'clock thing."

I made a noise of frustration. I hadn't asked. We had separate lives that overlapped in very specific ways. That separation was good to some extent. We had done fiery in the past, and burnt bright and exploded and spent years hating each other. Still, I wanted more. I wanted to understand the six o'clock curfew. I wanted--No. I wrestled myself back on topic, and motioned for Parker to follow me. At the place I had found the knife, I said. "I think they probably waited until Duke came out after closing and jumped him. I found his pocket knife in the gravel here."

"He could have dropped that anytime."

"He checks everything constantly. You've seen him patting down his pockets. He wouldn't have far to backtrack to find something."

"Fair enough. You talked to him at 9:30. I saw him in the _Grey Gull_ at noon. He seemed fine at those times. That's a starting point." 

I nodded. We didn't have proof yet, but it was early. I motioned for her to follow me. "Over here." We moved to the side of the building. "I found his cell, smashed. The gravel is disturbed and there's blood. I think he put up a struggle by the back door, ran, tried to call for help."

She walked around the corner and stared at the blood. "So he was here." She outlined an area about eighteen inches across of very fine blood droplets. One side had a regular edge getting wider, the drops spread further apart. It was regular enough that it should have been mirrored on the other edge of the drops, but instead ended abruptly taking half the fan out. A trail of increasingly large drops led to the mist, originating at a point two feet away. "I'd say high velocity spatter, but the directionality of the drops is wrong. Whatever made this pattern, something caught part of it."

"The fine drops didn't travel much beyond whatever caused the void. It would have been pretty low to the ground." 

She smiled. "We may have someone walking around with a hard to see coating of blood on their shoe. In this case, I hope it's Duke's."

"The struggle must have been before they—" _blood, everywhere blood_ "—before the attack. I would expect to see more transfer and large droplets, if they had struggled here after." Torture. What they did to Duke inside was torture, but I flinched even thinking the word.

"I thought they stabbed him on the _Rouge_. We don't know how much he was bleeding when he came out of here."

"The cuts on his arm and chest were ordered, most of them very straight and clean. He wasn't moving when those happened, like if he was tied to a table. The _Rouge_ was chaotic. No room in there to hold him down with enough people to provide brute force, and I—well, I wasn't looking for anything left they could have tied him down with." I scrubbed a hand over my eyes. "We need to get out and interview these patrons. Move some of this out of speculation."

I heard a car pulling in behind me. 

Parker spoke up before I could turn around. "Vince and Dave."

Vince had been hostile in recent months. He had told me several times to back off my pursuit of the Guard leak that had led the Rev to the cabin. Our last conversation was one best not repeated, and communication since had been through Parker, Dwight, or kept to the barest minimum on both our parts when circumstances brought us face to face. It worried me that he had directly called me when he couldn't get Dwight.

The two old men got out of Vince's car in a flutter of hand waving and bickering. 

"Where do you want to do this, Parker?"

She shivered. "My place. It's too cold to stand outside the whole time, and we can't do it inside the _Gull_." She headed for the stairs, leaving me to invite the Teagues up.

"Nathan. Have you heard anything yet?" Dave liked Duke. The two had some connection that neither of them wanted to elaborate on, so it didn't surprise me that he was first to ask.

"I haven't heard anything. I left Dwight a text message. Come on up to Audrey's apartment."

Vince had a manilla envelope clutched in one of his big hands. He stopped at the window, looking in at the _Gull's_ disarray. "Oh." He managed to draw the single syllable out to significance. I knew he'd seen the marked tables and dark shadows of blood on the floor.

Vince and Dave had already entered the apartment ahead of me when my text alert beeped. The message was from Dwight. I read it as I stepped through the door. _External bleeding stopped. Pressure stable. Looking for internal. Will update in 1 hour._

I stopped in the doorway, staring at my phone. Parker twisted to look over the back of the couch. "Letting in cold air, Nathan."

I shook my head and pulled the door shut.

"What is it, Nathan?" Dave again, worry deepening the lines on his face.

I sat on the couch next to Parker and handed my phone to her. She silently held it up for the Teagues to read. 

"Well, that's—" Dave cleared his throat. "that's progress."'

Vince's hands worried at the envelope. I couldn't remember the last time I had seen him look so uncomfortable. When everyone was looking at him he opened the envelope and slid the contents out onto the coffee table. He shifted a piece of paper—the letter Vince had mentioned—off a small pile of photos. 

Vince swiped a hand over them. There were four. Printed on photo paper, but with that odd sheen of older model home picture printers. Those could be purchased in thrift shops and yard sales. We couldn't track them that way. I didn't pick any of the photos up. I didn't trust myself to not rip them to shreds. There was Duke and ropes and blood. Before I could make sense of what I was seeing, Vince shuffled them on the table, and they became a timeline. 

The first—Duke tied to the table, blood down his chin and streaked on his chest, but no cuts. He was looking with desperate sincerity at something just outside the frame. They had framed the picture of him alone. Had he known then what they were going to do to him? Was he pleading for his life? How long had they drawn out the helpless anticipation? Had they waited until Duke knew beyond a doubt that he couldn't escape? Alone. Exhausted. He didn't share a lot, but this, I knew, was his nightmare turned to reality, and he'd faced it alone. I tasted bile and swallowed until it dulled.

I dragged my gaze to the next image. Duke wasn't alone in this one. It was taken over someone's shoulder. My mind catalogued details of the perpetrator: a red hoodie, slender, knife held in a white knuckled grip in the left hand as they drew it across Duke's chest. Duke's face was shiny with sweat. In the image his mouth was frozen in a grimace, but his eyes stared almost directly at the camera. He was trying to connect to the person cutting him. Had it worked? Had this person holding the knife made eye contact with another human being and deliberately tortured him? Psychopaths. We were facing a gang of psychopaths. 

I had only seen the expression Duke wore in the third picture once before. When I accidentally triggered a flashback on the way to the cabin. It was a mix of terror and confusion as reality and what he was seeing didn't match. The knife—held in a right hand, no sleeve visible—pressed against Duke's arm. Bleeding cuts formed a ladder below the knife. There was already so much blood, and it wasn't halfway over yet. I jolted in my seat, my body trying to leap up to run to the the hospital before I my mind caught up to the impulse. 

I pressed myself down to the couch, and looked at the last photo, the wound pattern looked much like I had found him this morning, minus the slice down his side. He was staring blankly, like he had been when I walked into the bedroom, and I understood Vince's worry that he might be dead. Had my alarm already gone off when this was snapped? Was I awake when they untied him, drove him to _Rouge_ and left him? He said he had been drinking, but was he in his right mind to be able to say it was him drinking or that someone else had been? Did they stab him then sit down to drink off their night of torture before staging a struggle? Or had they finally gotten squeamish and left him alone, bleeding, with no phone, for someone else to finish the job?

I suddenly realized they were all staring at me. "What?"

"They asked how he was found." Parker shouldn't be looking at me with so much concern. Hadn't she just looked at the same pictures?

"We assumed it was Audrey when she came home, but he was on his boat?" Dave asked.

"Right." My voice creaked and I cleared my throat. "Right. We had plans. I brought breakfast. The hatch on the _Rouge_ wasn't closed." I stared at the fourth picture. "Blood on the walls, broken glass and spilled liquor near the table, more blood on the ladder. When I found him he—" _deep breath_ "—he looked like this. Not seeing. At first—it was dark—I thought—but then I saw his chest move. There was the knife on the floor beside him, vomit and partially dissolved pills on his chest, and blood." I tapped the picture. "Worse than this. A slice running down his ribs, deeper into his abdomen." 

I could hear my heart pounding, my breath was ragged. I had to move. Couldn't take them staring at me right now. I bolted for Parker's bathroom, shutting the door behind me. I sat on the edge of the tub. Duke wasn't dead. I hadn't walked into _that_. He would be okay, and I was going to calm the fuck down and find the bastards who did this. 

I strode back into the room, my body language daring anyone to be sympathetic. Dave looked anywhere but at me. Parker was studying the photos. 

Vince, stared right back at me, and without missing a beat said, "If you're with us, now. I'll read the letter."

I nodded, and Vince began.

"'The old orders of the Haven police, the Guard, and Church have failed to bring order and balance to this town for long enough. Reconciliation must happen. He took blood and paid blood. He is one with Haven now. We worked justice on Duke Crocker while he was under the protection of the police and the Guard. You cannot find us. You cannot stop us. We are Legion, and we will reconcile _everyone_.'"

Parker was the first to break the silence. "So, not the Rev's men."

I looked at Vince. "And not the Guard."

He shook his head, making his hair flap. "No!"

"So we've got a what? A terrorist group?" _Psychopaths that look you in the eye while they torture_ —

"This was aimed at us. At you, Nathan, and me as head of the Guard. Duke was a convenient target."

Dave interrupted with, "Who knew about Duke's involvement at the brewery?"

I sighed. "Everyone that was there. Victims and the Rev's men. Have to assume their close families and possibly friends. At least some of the Guard. A few of my officers. Who knows how far it could have spread."

"Or some version of it." Parker looked shaken. "Things like that mutate every time they're repeated."

Vince tapped a finger to his lips. "We could use that."

"How, Vince?" Dave asked.

"They claimed blood for blood. The rumor mill would distort the story. We compare this attack to the rumors. Work backward to give us some idea how close this _Legion_ is to a primary source."

"From what I saw, it fits pretty closely. Someone was close." _So much blood_. I swallowed heavily and nodded toward the phone. "It doesn't sound like details are going to be available anytime soon."

I stared at the phone. Vince's theory sounded good, but we were making a pretty big assumption about the literalness of the 'blood for blood' statement. Discussion turned to details of what we had found downstairs. 

I picked up the letter and read it again. Who would the next target be? They clearly disliked all three of the most influential groups that dealt directly with the Troubles. The Rev's group was largely gone with the death of the man himself. As Vince pointed out, Duke had been a statement. Targeting Duke while I was dating him, and had kept him out of the kidnapping investigation, and while the Guard was under strict orders by Vince to leave him be…

"Whoever wrote this knows that Vince ordered the Guard to leave Duke alone."

They had all stopped and were staring at me. Again. 

Parker said, "So they got information from someone who saw what happened with the Rev's men, and information about what's going on in the Guard right now."

"The order to stay away from Duke was broadcast. It had to be to ensure that none of my people made a mistake." 

The slight emphasis on the word 'mistake' said loud and clear that Vince was referring to the leaking of the cabin location. We might be working together to face a mutual threat here, but the problems were still just beneath the surface.

Parker pressed on, "So anyone at all associated with the Guard would have known about that?"

Vince looked like he was sucking a lemon, but nodded.

I threw the letter back on the table. "We're getting nowhere here!"

"Well, what about motivation?" Dave waved off an impending protest from Vince that none of his people were involved. "We know who could have known, but who has the motivation to do this?"

"No, no," Parker said, "we have to define _this_ first. We have two different things. We have this letter and threat and promise to do more. Then we have the attack on Duke." 

"But the letter said why they picked Duke. To attack both the police and the Guard," Dave said.

"It does serve that purpose, but they could have opened with other things. This," she waved a hand across the pictures, "this feels personal."

I nodded. "The way they destroyed the _Gull_ and the scene on the _Rouge_. There was a lot of rage."

"It has to be someone close," Vince said.

"I hate to say it, but the angriest ones are those that were kidnapped," Dave added.

"Except–" 

Parker touched my hand, and I stopped. "What reason would one of the Rev's men have for recreating what they made him do? They wanted him useful or dead."

Vince hmphed, and wouldn't look at me as he said, "Some of the Guard might have wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine, but they wouldn't have left him to be found alive."

"Could we have missed some of the Rev's men?"

"It's possible," Vince said, his voice dropping to a growl, "but the highest ranking were definitely taken care of," 

Dave pushed his glasses up. "Why do you ask, Nathan?" 

"There was glass in his knees and shins. He was kneeling in it. No one else should have known about that."

Vince and Dave looked at each other. Vince finally said, "We don't know what you're talking about."

"If you don't know, who in the Guard could?" Parker asked.

"Something the Rev did to Duke. Make him kneel, and _McKee_ said—" I broke off. They didn't know, and this was Duke's to tell.

Parker patted my arm. "We need to know, if we're going to be able to use it to eliminate people from our most likely list."

I sighed and told them in more detail, and gave Vince and Dave a rundown of the scene downstairs. Vince looked thoughtful. 

"They stripped him by the bar?" Dave asked. 

"That's where we found the shirt."

He pointed to the first picture. "See the blood around his mouth? And here on the pants legs."

"What if he fought them? Ending up in the glass could have been incidental. This happened first, when he was most able to fight. We can't rule people out based on this," Vince added. "It is odd that you found him on the _Cape Rouge_ , though, Nathan."

Dave added, "That's right, and Duke never stabbed anyone. That's different."

"They took pictures. Probably more than these. Downstairs they were putting on a show for someone. For us? Maybe. Maybe for themselves. They are claiming the title Legion, what if it isn't just a statement."

"What?" She had made a leap I wasn't prepared to follow.

"The dining room downstairs can hold a lot of people. What if the reason they mopped was to get rid of a crowd of footprints?"

"You're saying this was _entertainment_ for a crowd?" I hadn't thought my hatred could get any deeper.

"Not exactly. More like evidence. They took pictures. They want people to know what they did. Want people to see it."

"But why take him to a second location to finish?" Dave asked adjusting his glasses.

"There's no room on the _Rouge_ for a crowd. No audience," I said.

"Plausible deniability," Vince added.

"Or there was something significant about taking him home." 

An uncomfortable silence fell over us until a loud gurgling sound from my stomach lessened the solemnity of the moment. "We have to question the Rev's victims again. I don't like this."

Parker stood abruptly. "I'm making eggs and toast. How many for you?"

I blinked at her. "What?"

"Did you eat this morning? I doubt it. You need to eat, to keep going, so how many eggs?"

She was right. Not taking care of myself wouldn't help anything, even if eating was the last thing I wanted to do right now. "Two." 

I jotted down notes. We had to locate the victims, the patrons of the _Gull_ , the Wednesday night closer, get the computers to George, track down the footage from the marina, finish collecting evidence, get a handle on the rumor mill. I started writing names beside tasks. I would have to delegate more of this than just the crime scene collections to my officers, or we'd lose too much time.

Parker handed me a plate of eggs and toast. Vince and Dave were in their own world, bickering over what sounded like how they were going track the rumors. I ate carefully, but quickly. There was a knock at the door as I put my plate in the sink. 

Stan was on the other side. "Uh, Chief, do you want us to get started on the crime scene?"

"Just give me a minute and I'll be down to walk you through what we've already done."

I pushed the door to and grabbed my coat. The others were already gathering up their things. The envelope was disappearing into Vince's pocket. He saw me looking and said, "I'll make copies, discreetly, and see that you get them."

The cop in me rebelled, but I nodded. I didn't need that note to enter this case in any official capacity.

"Can the two of you trace the rumors?" Parker asked.

Vince and Dave looked at each other indignantly. "Can we trace rumors?" Dave snorted.

Vince patted Dave on the shoulder. "We'll work on it. Come on, Dave."

Vince started to say something as he passed me, but ended up just pulling his coat tighter around himself and leaving.

"I'll get addresses on all these people, Nathan," Parker said as I walked out the door. 

Stan showed me the box containing evidence from the _Cape Rouge_ in the trunk of his patrol car. He had found a small journal under the edge of the side table. The last page was dated to yesterday. There were letters and numbers and times in various columns. It all apparently made sense to Duke, and probably would to Dwight. The entries were time coded every four hours from eight AM to eight PM. The last time entry was ten PM with a dash beside it. That definitely helped set our timeline. I'd let Dwight know it had been found, in case it was medically relevant. I signed the evidence log and slipped it into my coat pocket.

Stan went through all the evidence he and Rafferty had gathered. Numerous fingerprints, blood samples, and hair samples, and the knife had been collected, and hundreds of pictures had been taken on both digital and film cameras. Miller had collected bootprints, fingerprints, and hair from the paramedics, and taken possession of the medication bottles and what was left of Duke's clothing once the ER personnel had released them. 

I walked them through the scene inside the _Gull_. With everything we already had and what was yet to be gathered at the Gull, it was going to take a long time—too long—to sort through this mess.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe it has been so long! I know it's not looking good at this point, but I do intend to finish this story. Posting this makes about half of what I have written so far, so there is a lot more to it. Thank you to everyone who is still reading this story, and especially to everyone who has commented reminding me to get back to work. I really do appreciate it. 
> 
> Also, another hearty thanks to Roseveare who is really responsible for this story being a lot more solid than it ever would have been had I been on my own. She has been awesome even when all the crises in my real life has led to me being a total flake in online communications.


	8. Chapter Eight

 

 

### 

CHAPTER EIGHT

 

Heading back toward Parker's apartment, I stopped near the stairs and checked the time and ring volume on my phone. Dwight should have called or texted before now, but I hadn't missed anything and the volume was up. I made myself put the phone away. I'd—I needed to… Addresses. Parker should have the addresses. We had to get to people before the rumors spread and altered their stories. 

I leaned on the wall for support. Everything was spinning and I couldn't catch my breath. I could hear my heart pounding. A couple of steps got me to the bench, and I thumped down on it, my head hanging down almost to my knees. I couldn't lose Duke. Not like this. My vision blurred, then cleared with a blink. I put my forearm over my eyes to catch the overflow. Duke was tough. He'd make it through this.

Things gradually steadied around me, and my breathing settled back down to normal. I sat up, and leaned against the wall. This was the reason you weren't supposed to investigate things you were this close to. Another minute to get myself under control, that's all I needed. I tried to concentrate. This was an organized effort. If they'd targeted Duke who might be next?

The phone rang. 

"Dwight?" My voice cracked and I cleared my throat.

"They're moving him to ICU now."

"Is he– How is he?"

"He lost too much blood. The next twenty-four hours...His organs could start shutting down from the shock of it. If they do, the odds are slim. There's a--" he paused and drew in a long breath. "A decent chance that won't happen. That he'll improve, but there's no way to know yet."

The light around me dimmed, and I distantly heard the ragged sounds of my breathing and the pounding of my heart. The tinny sound of Dwight's voice broke through. "Nathan. Nathan! It's not happened yet. He's holding for now."

My breathing steadied and my vision edged back toward normal as he spoke. I had to do my job, so Duke and everybody else didn't have to worry about these Legion idiots. There were questions I was supposed to ask--as a cop, not a friend,"Is he awake?"

"Sedated. A day at least. Stress could kill him right now. It might be a week or more before you can question him safely."

I appreciated Dwight's smooth transition to work mode. "We need details on the injuries." I explained Vince's theory.

Dwight listened, then said, "I can get you that." He hesitated then continued. "They didn't find anything internal. The deep wound on his side didn't penetrate to the organs. It slid alongside the peritoneum. Most of the rest were relatively shallow."

That didn't make sense with what I had seen. "Then where did all that blood come from?"

"He never told you?"

"No."

Dwight sighed. "It's the Warfarin. It's hard to keep the right level in the body, because a lot of things can affect the dose needed. He was running high. It kept him from clotting normally. Even more than intended."

"Blood thinners."

"Yeah."

" _Why_ was he on blood thinners, Dwight? No more evasions. I need to know."

"Arrhythmia. Bad one. Puts him at high risk for a stroke. They aim for controlling the rate and rhythm and blood pressure, and keeping him from being able to form clots if the other medications aren't totally effective."

And things suddenly clicked into place. The first doctor had said they were worried about his heart. I had even passed that on to Parker, but had forgotten about it until now. I had seen all the symptoms—the slow recovery, lack of energy, change in diet, even Wednesday's sexual failure—I should have figured it out sooner. Maybe I didn't want to believe it could be something permanent. He had been getting _better_ , damn it!

" _How_?"

"Best guess? McKee." A profound weariness had crept into Dwight's voice, and his need pulled me back from my own crisis.

"Are you staying there?"

"I have to stay close. _Damn it, Duke_. He didn't tell you. I'm his legal medical proxy. If anything goes wrong, and they need permission to do something, that's me until he's awake. I can't help the investigation."

I wasn't the only one feeling useless today. "I trust you to be there. I need that, so I can work this case."

Raised voices carried from near the main door. 

Dwight grunted a noise of frustration, but said, "I'll make sure the doc fills out the injury report. Give me a solid hour for it."

"Thanks, Dwight."

The commotion around the corner had escalated into furniture being shoved around and shouting. "You don't understand! I have to! If I don't things will happen. _Bad_ things!"

"Sir, I can't let you in there." There was a pause, then. "Sir!"

I put my phone back into its case on my belt and moved to help Tatum and the others with the problem.

A thin, older man with grey hair and a neat beard, wearing an old suit that looked a size too big on him, was being blocked from the door by Tatum. This must be the Boncombe that Tracey had mentioned earlier. As I approached he feinted one way then darted to the other side. Tatum managed to block him again.

"Sir, if you don't back off, I'm going to have to arrest you for interfering with a crime scene," Tatum said.

Boncombe rocked foot to foot and moved his fingers in odd, jerky movements. "Bad things. You don't understand. Bad things." He took a step back, muttering a litany of, "Bad things. You don't understand. Bad things."

"Mr. Boncombe."

His head snapped up in response to his name, and he stopped rocking, though the hand movements remained. I realized they were in a precise pattern. 

"Mr. Boncombe," I stepped closer, even with Tatum, "some _bad things_ happened here last night, and we have to investigate. No one can go in there."

"But I have to. I don't want to hurt anyone. I have to eat the same thing at 11:30 to keep it away. It's 11:30." He turned and stalked off a few steps. He appeared to be talking to himself, and the hand movements shifted into a more complex pattern that included taps across his body.

"Look. what if someone drove you to Henry's instead? You can get lunch there."

He stopped moving and seemed to be thinking about it for a minute. He glanced at his watch, and started shaking his head. "No, no, no, no. It's 11:32." A look of pure anguish spread across his face and he whispered. "It's already too late." He wrapped his arms around his head and crumpled to his knees, rocking and muttering.

I took another step toward him when something whizzed past my ear. I followed the movement and saw a button circling around the huddled form of Boncombe. I glanced back at Tatum and only just managed to duck before being hit by the rest of the buttons from his shirt.

I saw movement from the corner of my eye. The threads holding the buttons on my shirt were working themselves loose. In a few seconds they were also swirling around Boncombe. Of course he was Troubled. Of course.

Parker rushed over. "Heard the racket. What have we got?"

"Trouble. Tracey said the guy was on a schedule. He said bad things would happen if he didn't stay on schedule." I waved a hand toward the increasing number of objects circling around the man.

"Did you try getting him to go somewhere else? That was a nail! The nails are working out of the walls!"

She kept her head down, but worked her way toward the man. 

"Tater! See if you can find the edge of the effect. Maybe we can just move him to a safer spot." 

"Sure thing, Chief."

I turned back to Boncombe and Parker. Threads were waving around her from all the seams of her clothes. I looked at my own clothes and realized the same thing was happening to me. A glance at Tatum already several feet further away showed that his clothing was remaining intact. Maybe the area of effect would remain fairly small. 

Parker had made it over to Boncombe and was talking to him quietly. He was shaking his head while continuing to rock. I heard a ripping sound behind me. Before I could turn to see what had happened, I heard the sound of something hitting me and found myself on the ground. The screen door from the _Gull_ was heading straight toward Parker.

She was turning toward me, and it missed her by a fraction. She dropped to the ground to avoid it's swirling path around Boncombe. Parts of my jacket slipped away. Parker's was gone, and the unthreading was working on her shirt. More pieces of the _Gull_ were flying over my head to join it all. Nothing Parker was saying seemed to be having any effect.

I saw a car pull into the driveway. We needed to get whoever it was away from the danger zone, but I was pinned down by increasingly larger items flying over my head. The threads of my pants seams flew away and I clutched at the material to preserve my modesty. Parker was down to clutched remnants of her shirt near Boncombe. Tracy got out of the car with a take out box. Boncombe's Trouble seemed to be focused on the _Gull_ and anyone between him and it. She was able to walk up to within a few feet of him.

"Bill?"

Boncombe didn't seem to hear her. 

"Bill Boncombe! I have your lunch right here!"

He looked over at her, and things froze in their flight over my head. 

"I know it's a little late, but you know me. I always get it all right for you. Don't I?"

His arms relaxed away from clutching his head, and he nodded. 

"Come on, you can eat out on the deck. You did that while we were remodeling, right?"

He nodded, but then glanced at his watch and panic reappeared on his face. "But it's 11:40."

"A little late, but you've still got me and your food and this building—assuming you put it back together. You can fix this. Get back on schedule." She opened the box, so he could see the burger and chips.

"I'll be late all day!" The objects whirled slowly as he wavered.

"I'll drive you to the next place. That'll save you ten minutes of walking, and you'll be back on schedule."

I could see, in Boncombe's expression, the intense desire to be back on schedule warring with the anxiety of these differences. Finally he said, somewhat suspiciously. "You can get me to the marina at exactly 12:20? You promise?"

Tracy nodded. "I promise. I'll make it so we pull up at the marina parking lot at exactly 12:20 by your watch."

Things started flying over my head in reverse now. Parker's clothes began repairing themselves, the shirt pulling from her fingers and slipping back into place. Bits of my jacket flew back in place, the thread moving so rapidly to repair that I could barely see it. A glance revealed my pants fully repaired as well. In much less time that it had taken to destroy things, everything was back in place. An outside observer would never know it had happened.

Tracy led the way toward the deck, a shushing finger on her lip and a slight shake of her head as she passed kept me silent as Boncombe followed her. 

She returned after a few seconds. "Did you know he was Troubled?" I growled.

"No. But I thought about all the times he muttered about bad things happening without his schedule, and decided someone had to help him."

"That—" She had mentioned the schedule, and I had not given it another thought. If she hadn't reconsidered and brought that food how big would Boncombe's area of effect have gotten? Being Chief on a normal day often felt like being a human in a job meant for a superhuman. Today? 

I met Tracy's gaze. "Thank you." 

She nodded.

Today...I was grateful for others picking up my slack. I spun around and paced over to my truck. 

I heard Parker asking if Tracy was sure she could handle Boncombe after he had eaten and making arrangements for him to be fed tomorrow. At least as far as Troubled people went, he seemed easy to manage—assuming anyone was listening. 

Parker wrapped things up with Tracy, and joined me by the Bronco. "I have the addresses." She held up her notepad. Her eyes darted away from me as she asked, "Has Dwight called?"

I nodded. 

She waited a few seconds. When I didn't elaborate, she waved her hand in an 'And?' motion.

I leaned against the Bronco with a heavy thump, looking up at the sky. I took a deep breath and scrubbed the back of a hand over my eyes just in case, before looking at her. "He's in the ICU now. Dwight said—" I cleared my throat. "He said, they don't know what's going to happen with him the next twenty-four hours. He could get a lot worse."

"Nathan. Go see him."

I shook my head. "He's sedated." 

"What did Dwight say about getting the injury report?"

"An hour." I checked my watch. "Still have about fifty minutes on that. We can probably get, what? Maybe two, three crises in before then?"

She gave me an I'm-not-going-to-argue-this look as she held out a scrap of paper with an address on it. "I have the addresses of the regulars, the closer, and the victims. I'll go talk to the regulars. You catch the closer before going to the hospital."

I reluctantly took the paper. I trusted Parker's ability to take care of herself, and agreed with Tracy's assessment that none of the regulars were likely to be involved. We needed to cover these bases as quickly as possible. Still, I didn't like splitting up, leaving her alone. Duke had been alone yesterday. I struggled with what, if anything to say, but finally settled for a gruff, "Be careful."

A brief look of annoyance flashed across her face, but it was quickly replaced with understanding. "You, too."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one isn't too long, but there is a bonus! I have the next chapter ready--this one was the hold up. I will post chapter nine tomorrow.
> 
> Thanks to Roseveare for the beta work, and wave to Queenbookwench.


	9. Chapter Nine

 

 

### 

CHAPTER NINE

 

I finished the interview with the Wednesday night closer, Carissa Bailey, and headed toward the hospital, mulling over what she'd told me. She'd had a slow night, with neither a lot of cash paying customers, nor customers in general. Her cash deposit was less than $200.00. She had given me a list of the regulars she'd seen and it had pretty well matched the list Tracy had given of those expected on Thursday. It was looking even less likely that any of them were behind this. This wasn't someone who had spent months daily paying Duke for drinks. This was someone angry, with a personal grudge and a team to help them carry it out. 

I stopped, waiting my turn at a traffic circle. Miss Bailey hadn't been able to think of anything out of the ordinary happening lately. She'd had one large family gathering Wednesday night, but they had paid with a credit card. She didn't remember the name. I made a note to follow up on it, but anyone bringing out three or four generations and leaving a paper trail like that was low on my suspect list. She did say that she had offered to come in and cover the evening shift Thursday to get away from her in-laws, but Duke had refused. 

Traffic was horrible today. I finally inched my way around the traffic circle. I wondered...if he hadn't been alone last night, would this never have happened? Or would it have just been delayed? When would he have been so isolated in a vulnerable location again? He had a life outside of the time spent with me, and Audrey, and Dwight, and Beattie's kids, but he was so cautious these days. Always back on his boat before six when he was alone, always checking everything. How had they taken him by surprise last night?

_How_? Duke _was_ always checking everything. He had cameras outside with monitors in his office. The hard drive that stored the images had been smashed, but I hadn't thought to check the status of the cameras. They weren't smashed on the ground or I would have found them. Duke and Dwight together were damn good at paranoia. What avenues of approach could they have missed that let someone get the drop on Duke? If I found that, maybe we'd find more evidence of who they were.

After pulling into the parking lot of the hospital, I added this note to my growing list of things to be checked and verified. I gripped the wheel absently. Duke was in there and I wanted more than anything to go inside and hold his hand and never let him go; never let him out of my sight again, but if I did that he'd still be in danger. I'd have to sleep sometime and whoever did this could come back. The only way to be sure he was safe was to find these assholes and put them away. I couldn't let myself stay no matter how much I wanted to.

I had changed pants in Parker's apartment before I left, and scrubbed my hands until they were bright red, but Duke's blood still stained where it had worked into the chapped lines of dry skin. I pushed the image of Duke in the corner, bloody and staring, out of my mind, and quickly headed toward the entrance. As long as I was moving forward, as long as I had a goal, I could make myself keep going.

I found Dwight in the ICU waiting room. The room was busy, but there was a large area clear around him. One look at his face explained why everyone else had crowded into the other end of the room. Dwight was jotting notes onto a piece of paper. In an open pocket folder emblazoned with the hospital logo, a body diagram was half visible. I stared at it.

"Nathan." Dwight's voice was controlled, but the fury underneath was easily heard. He made a curt motion toward a chair, and I sat. 

He handed me the paper. It was a list of names and addresses. There were a mix of kidnap victims, Guard, and former members of the Rev's church—ones we hadn't been able to tie to the kidnappings. "These have the biggest axes to grind with Duke. The ones with stars have enough information to match the injury pattern. I've heard rumors about someone new in town, calling themselves Legion. Rumor is that they've gathered up a few of the more cynical and disillusioned in Haven."

"It was them."

"Legion?"

"They sent a letter. And pictures." I expected more visible anger when I explained the package Vince had received, but Dwight pulled back, colder, even more controlled. People on the other side of the room shifted uncomfortably, somehow able to sense the danger despite the calm.

Dwight tapped the list he had handed me. "Some of these would be exactly the sort to be recruited by a group like that. Find them, and you maybe find this Legion."

I nodded and folded the paper into my jacket pocket. He pulled the diagram out. "You've got pictures in your work email. I can tell you without the files that the pattern of the shallow cuts is nearly identical to the brewery victims, if you overlaid all of them onto one person. Except this one." He pointed out the long gash down Duke's side.

_Blood welling up out of the carpet over my hand_. I nodded.

I pointed to a straight line across his chest. "Rope?"

Dwight nodded. "Bruise is too wide to be a cord. Also at the wrists, waist, thighs and shins. His ankles are bruised, but it looks like they tied the rope over the top of his pants and socks. Spread the line out. He had bruising to his back, ribs, chin, knees, upper arms, and face. He'd bitten through his tongue. That's where the bloody vomit came from."

"They're sure?" That was one weight off my shoulders. Even after Dwight had said they had found no internal bleeding, the idea that Duke had been vomiting blood was terrifying. 

Dwight nodded. "The pills you saw were the antidepressant, wouldn't have caused that anyway. They don't think they were ever in his stomach. He spit them out." Dwight stopped. He rubbed his forehead and with a heavy breath, the controlled fury slipped behind a mask of worry and fatigue. "This is too much. Too soon."

"Duke's strong. He'll make it." _He has to_ , I didn't add.

"I know he is, but…" He shook his head and tapped the paper, the worry hidden again. "There were some nicks on his throat. And then the glass. They'll be picking slivers out for days."

That was clearly said with some experience with glass. I wondered briefly if he was the one who took the glass in the past or sent through someone else through it? I nodded in agreement. 

"Couple of things right now that can cause problems. He lost a lot of blood. Too much. They've got his volume back up, but the shock by itself can cause so much stress on the body that organs begin shutting down. It can cascade into death in just a few days. They're doing everything that can be done to avoid that."

He waited until I had nodded before he continued. "The other thing is the risk of stroke. Just being in ICU ups the risk. Being still, being injured… His heart problem means he's always at a higher risk, and they had to reverse the effects of his blood thinner to control the bleeding. Between the injuries and everything they had to do to replace blood volume, risks they have to take in balancing which medications he can tolerate right now versus the arrhythmia, his chances of having a stroke are dangerously high." 

"Stroke--?" There was a couple that I saw every now and then at big community events, like the annual Memorial Day picnic. The wife had had a stroke when she was in her thirties. She hadn't been able to talk at all since that day. Had to be fed, assisted walking, dressing, everything. They hadn't had any children yet, so her husband had been her sole caretaker for nearly thirty years. I always heard whispers that he should put her away somewhere and live his life. I never heard him complain, and the looks he gave her told me that he loved her. They still communicated, but it was an art in reading subtlety and I wondered how she corrected him if he misinterpreted.

Suddenly I was picturing Duke locked away like that. He would hate it with every fiber in his being, but hadn't she had dreams, too? If that happened to Duke, could he ever learn to be content trapped in his own body? Could I be as patient and dedicated as that man, or would I even get a chance to try?

Dwight cleared his throat and I shook my head. I didn't have to consider that, because Duke was going to be fine. He _wasn't_ going to die. He _wasn't_ going to have a devastating stroke. 

I outlined the basics of what we'd found at the _Rouge_ and _Gull_ so far. 

Dwight took it all in with the cold control, nodding once when I finished. "The _Gull_ was planned. The chaos they left there was intentional for distraction. You're looking for someone else at the _Rouge_."

"Two unrelated attacks in one night?" What were the odds of that?

"Couldn't have been much more than an hour before you found him after this last wound, but he'd been at the _Rouge_ moving around for a while before that. Signs of a struggle, not just chaos for its own sake. Someone didn't like the way things ended at the _Gull_."

"Why not make sure of it then?"

"Maybe they thought they had. It was close." The worry had broken through his mask again. He closed the folder and jerked his head in the direction of the ICU. "You going in?"

"Yeah." I stood up. "Wait." I fished the little notebook out of my pocket and held it out to Dwight. "They found this on the Rouge."

Dwight took it and flipped to the last filled-in page. "This is good," he said pointing to the bottom of the page.

"What does it mean?"

"Medication schedule, heart rate, blood pressure. He skipped the 10:00, but took the others. It confirms your timeline." Dwight stood up, I followed suit, and we started walking toward the ICU.

I nodded. "It looked like the kitchen had been cleaned before the place was trashed, so pretty sure it happened after closing."

"How bad was the damage?" Dwight stopped short and turned to face me. I stopped to avoid bouncing off the big man's chest. "Did you put in a plan for dealing with Boncombe?"

"No. It was a problem." The frustration of the day crept into my voice. 

"Everything in one piece down there?"

"Tracy saved our butts. Volunteered to drive him down to the marina to get him back on schedule."

Dwight started walking again. "Good. He's not normally a problem."

"So I gathered." 

We entered the antechamber, scrubbed our hands and put on gloves. A nurse had us wait for several minutes before she admitted us to the room. I was too wound up to talk while we waited. She finally said they were finished for now, and gave me a rundown of the rules before letting me proceed. We had a half hour.

Duke was just out of the line of sight from the antechamber. I stopped to take a good look. There were even more wires and tubes than I had expected, but they'd gotten rid of the blood. 

Dwight was watching me closely. "He looks better," I said, and a fraction of the tension went out of his stance.

Duke's chest was bare, except for gauze. An IV tube stuck up through the bandages. His arms were mummy-wrapped from shoulder to wrist, but his hands were clear, so I clasped the nearer one. I massaged his hand in the way that never failed to relax him. It felt...wrong on some level to openly do something that had meant intimacy for us, but the worry lines in his face smoothed a little. _I wasn't imagining it_.

The nurse had told me that he was too sedated to react to voice, but talking to him was never a bad idea. "Duke. It's Nathan. You're safe. You're in the hospital. You are not alone."

A sheet was all that preserved Duke's modesty. It was pooled over his hips, leaving his legs bare. Several more IV's and devices were connected to his legs since his arms couldn't be used. 

Dwight held Duke's other hand and offered his own assurances. We stood there for the thirty minute allowed visiting time, talking to Duke. We didn't say anything of importance, just kept up a light conversation as if he was participating. He never reacted, but I still had a sense that us being there helped on some level. The nurse came back and let us know we had to go so they could do more tests and treatments.

Dwight said, "I'll be right outside this room, Duke, and I'll be back in here as soon as they let me. I've got you covered."

I squeezed his hand a little tighter, and said, "I'll be back soon, Duke." 

I reluctantly let go and followed Dwight out. I made it back to the waiting room and collapsed into a chair. My breath was coming in gasps and there were spots in my vision. Dwight sat down nearby and waited. 

When I had caught my breath he said, "You got this, Nathan?"

I nodded. "Easier to control when I've got something else to focus on."

"I can't tell you everything is going to be fine." He sounded like he needed someone to tell him that.

Hell, we all needed to hear that, but the two of us were both too damn practical for platitudes to give any comfort.

Dwight went on. "I won't tell you everything is going to be fine, but I need to know you're out there to catch these bastards, so I can do what I have to here."

It was the flip side of what I had said to him earlier. We needed to know the other was doing the part we couldn't right now. A sense of calm washed over me, and I felt a measure of my normal confidence returning. Like before, Dwight's need helped pull me away from my own overwhelming emotions. Knowing him, he knew exactly what I needed to hear right now to remain functional. It was a little annoying that he always seemed to know everyone so well, but it still worked.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is _almost_ finished, but then I have to get it edited, so I know that will take a while. It may be another double feature when I do post again, because Chapter 11 is ready to edit. Through chapter 14 only needs minor work, so possibly not too long. 
> 
> No guarantees about timing, though. The summer therapy season is about to begin here. Somehow our summers manage to be busier than our school years, even though we all avoid the outdoors. Also, our birthday season is in June. We're planning an amazing Minions party for the youngest. They only like the elaborate themed parties for a very few years, so I really get into it. The middle kid is at the, "I just want to hang out." stage of parties. The oldest this year couldn't even think of a single thing he wanted for his birthday this year, and he's only 16! I told him that men weren't supposed to be that hard to buy for until they were at least 45, LOL.


	10. Chapter Ten

 

 

### 

CHAPTER TEN

 

NATHAN

 

After I left the hospital, I picked up take-out and then drove to the station to meet Parker. It was already after one and we still had a lot left to accomplish. She hadn't arrived yet when I got there, so I pulled the files. Dwight's impression that the wound patterns matched the wounds the Rev had forced Duke to inflict if they were all imposed on one person was spot on. I set the files of those victims he had listed as most likely to act on their grudge to the side and pulled what files we had on the rest of his list of malcontents. I didn't open the pictures of Duke he had sent me. 

Parker arrived as I was finishing. "You look better. Was there good news on Duke?"

I shook my head and slid the injury tally page over to her. "He did look better than he did when I found him."

She examined the paper and then asked how closely the pattern matched.

"Nearly perfectly. Except this one." I pointed at the one down the side. "That one happened on the _Rouge_."

She held up a flash drive. "Beattie had arrived to the office while I was looking for some of these guys down at the docks. Someone had broken the lock on her door, set the breakable things under the desk, and then knocked everything else onto the floor. Hadn't touched the security system. Like they needed to make a lot of noise."

"So someone wanted us to see this footage."

"Looks like." She started to plug the drive into my computer.

"Wait. These guys have been very intentional up to this point. We should test that drive on a non-networked computer. Just in case."

Audrey's eyebrows had shot up. "That's great thinking."

"You don't have to look so surprised."

"I'm just not used to seeing techy-Nathan."

"Not much call for it in Haven. We can use the laptop in the conference room." 

She grabbed one of the takeout trays from the corner of the desk. "One of these for me?"

"I almost forgot about them. We can eat while we watch."

_I'm too sexy for my shirt. I'm too sexy for my shirt_... blared from Parker's pocket. She pulled her phone out. "I've got to take this. Chris is supposed to be flying in tomorrow." _So sexy it_ —"Chris!"

I gestured that I was leaving. I know his Trouble can't effect me if I'm not looking at him, but I'd made enough of a fool of myself agreeing with him and fawning over him before Parker shared that tidbit to last a lifetime. It took a few minutes to get set up in the conference room. I turned off the wireless antenna on the laptop and disconnected it from the hardline. It staying wired in place was a legacy from my dad. He'd never had much use for computers, and this one was basically only used as a projector during briefings. I scanned the drive before opening the files. 

I opened the camera feed from the parking lot and moved it up to 10:30 PM, then set it on fast play. The color and sharp quality of the video surprised me, but then I remembered Beattie mentioning that she had upgraded her system after we had nothing to go on with the old one when Duke disappeared. 

Nothing happened for a long time. Nothing at all. Usually there would be some activity through the night, but the holiday must have shut the docks down as thoroughly as it had the rest of Haven. As 3:30 zipped past, a car pulled into the parking lot. I moved it back and set it to play at normal speed.

I jotted down the details of the car as I saw them: compact car, four doors, hatchback, older-possibly from the 80's or early 90's. The street lamps distorted the colors until all I could say for sure was light colored, maybe silver, grey, or light blue. At that distance I couldn't get the make or model. Two men exited. One paced in front of the car. His arm motions, body language, everything said this guy was agitated. 

The other one had opened the rear driver's side door and was leaning into the car for almost a whole minute. When he finally stood up, he dragged a third man out of the car. I couldn't see details enough to identify Duke in a court of law, but that was Duke. The agitated suspect led the way toward the docks, and the other man supported Duke out of frame. 

It was very, very tempting to go immediately to the next camera. To follow them straight through, but I let it play. Fifteen minutes later Duke's Land Rover pulled into the lot and a man got out. Even with the blurry camera image, I could tell it wasn't Duke. The guy was short and pudgy. No way he could be mistaken for Duke. That was solid enough for a court case. No confusion. The guy leaned against the car for nearly five minutes before the first two returned. The three of them got into the car and drove off. 

Audrey came in, so I waited until she was situated with her food. I still hadn't touched mine. "I told Chris not to come this weekend. Too dangerous," she said.

I nodded, it was better to not have one more to worry about, even though I doubted anyone other than Parker could withstand his charm. I turned on fast play again. I had gotten to the marina not long after 6:00. Dwight had said the last wound couldn't have happened too long before I arrived. An old pick-up truck with a broad horizontal stripe and a tool box pulled up at 4:30. I fast-forwarded through twenty minutes of it sitting there before the door finally opened. A stout man staggered out of the truck. He pulled another drink from a bottle, then threw it in the bed of his truck.

He was gone from the parking lot for forty-three minutes and fourteen seconds. My heart was racing—I could hear it, and my breathing was rapid when the man staggered back to his truck and drove away. Duke was bleeding out on the floor and this guy had-had— 

Audrey gripped my hand. "Hey, we have something to go on now. I'm going to go see if there were any calls about a drunk driver, and put what info there was about the cars into the system, see how many that leaves us. You good to start watching the other tapes?"

I took a deep, centering breath. Duke's meditating ways were rubbing off on me. I nodded and selected the file that showed the view of the main dock. I started at 10:30 again. Nothing happened until the agitated suspect walked into the frame. The other man and Duke weren't far behind him. Duke seemed to have gotten his feet under him a bit better, but by the time they were nearly to Duke's dock, he was stumbling and the other guy was holding more of his weight. 

I ran it back to the section they were most visible in and played it through on slow motion. White males, although since this was Maine that didn't narrow it down much. The one in front was definitely shorter than Duke, I'd give it an estimated range of 5'8" to 5'10". Slim build, light brown short hair. His face was never clear enough for more than very general descriptions. Nothing really stood out about this guy. He was depressingly average.

The other guy was tall. Maybe taller than Duke, but that was hard to tell with the way Duke was slumped over. He was bulky, more like Dwight, but with wild hair in that nearly orange color of red. If we were lucky and he was from this state, and had a driver's license, maybe we could find him. How many six foot plus redheads, especially with that rare shade, could there be? The thought niggled something in the back of my mind. I had seen hair like that before, hadn't I? 

They were only out of sight of the cameras for a few seconds over four minutes, which meant that by the time they had disengaged the locks on the _Rouge_ , they barely had time to dump Duke in his bed and leave without engaging the locks. 

They stopped by Beattie's office and the taller man went inside, presumably to trash it and destroy this footage. When he came out, he made a point to look right toward the camera and nod. So what was his game? Was he trying to help? If so why hadn't he just called 911 and left the phone off the hook? Would that have gotten whoever responded to Duke? He could have left a note with the phone. Maybe not. The agitated man looked inside, checking his work. He didn't seem to notice under the piles of paper that I knew must have been everywhere, based on the usual state of the office, that not much was actually broken. 

They quickly walked out of screen, and I fast forwarded again. At 4:52, the drunk staggered into frame. It took him nearly ten minutes to walk all the way down the dock to the _Rouge's_ pier. I saved a still-frame that showed his face pretty well. He had a scruffy beard and dark hair that looked more like a short style had been neglected than an intentionally long style. He was dressed in clothes that would be appropriate working the docks or a fishing boat. He looked familiar, but I wasn't placing him. He was out of frame for twenty-six minutes and thirty-eight seconds. When he came back in frame, he was moving much more confidently than he had before. The impression I got was that he was quite pleased with himself.

Rattling on the table drew my attention away from the screen. My hand was clenched in a fist, shaking. I had only missed this guy by about forty-five minutes, and right now I wouldn't give him a bent pin's chance of surviving a meeting with me. I had to calm down. With this footage, we had a chance of a real conviction, but not if I screwed up the arrest by giving in to my emotions. 

We needed to go through the footage of the days prior to this looking for suspicious behavior. The drunk asshole looked familiar and possibly worked around the docks, which probably explained his familiarity with where Duke lived, but the other two-three counting the driver of the Land Rover-were different. They had known exactly how to get to the _Rouge_ , and must have known something about the security on it to get through the locks so fast. That had to mean they had been there before. I'd check the roster to see who was available.

I had just finished delegating the job of searching through weeks of footage to Smith, when my phone rang. It was Dwight. 

"Dwight. Is—"

"No changes. I've been trying to contact Claire all day. I sent someone by to check up on her, and the door's off its hinges. She's gone." 

"Damn it! We'll be over there as soon as possible. I'm going to send someone ahead of us us to guard the scene."

"It'll be empty when they arrive. My guy prefers to give an anonymous tip."

"Just make sure he didn't anonymously touch anything. You'll call if anything changes?"

He said, "I will," and hung up.

I went to check in with Parker. She was drumming her fingers on the desk, giving the computer a dirty look. "The state servers are running slow, today. It'll be a while before it finishes the search."

"They took Claire." I motioned toward the exit and started walking.

She hurried to keep up with me walking down the hall. "Claire? What happened? 

"Dwight sent people looking for her. He said she was missing."

We left the station. "Missing? He wasn't just being stoic and understated and not mentioning that we're about to walk into something like the _Gull_?" 

"I--" I considered it while I swung into the driver's seat. "I don't think so."

Parker buckled her seatbelt before responding. "They took Duke to a second location. Has anyone checked her office?"

"She's probably closed for the holiday weekend, but it's just up the street. We'll check it on the way."

There was no sign of Claire's car at the tiny office building, and the door was locked. A cartoony turkey was stuck to the door. Peeking through the windows revealed nothing, but Parker found one of them unlocked. She had disappeared through it before I could say 'search warrant'. She was back almost as quickly, shaking her head.

"She's not in there," she said as she shimmied out again through the window.

Back in the truck she said, "We were supposed to have lunch today." She added quietly, "I didn't even call her to cancel."

"This isn't your fault, Parker."

She had her phone out dialing. "Maybe she's just at the restaurant." She put the phone up to her ear.

I kept glancing over at her, as she redialed twice. "Parker."

She held the phone to her ear and ignored me. 

"Parker."

The hand holding the phone fell to her lap.

"It's not your fault."

"I know, Nathan. Just, why her?"

I waited for the extra-heavy Black Friday shopping traffic to clear before turning onto Main Street. I finally said, "She helps us."

"She's nearly invisible as far as the people in the town are concerned. I didn't even know about her for over a year."

"They knew exactly how and when to get to Duke. They must have been watching him. Could've picked her out of his routine."

She was silent for a moment. "That means— Do we need to be protecting anyone associated with him?"

I hadn't even considered that. "Their targets so far have been involved in Duke's life and the Troubles."

"That covers a lot of—Beattie!"

"Send Tater to get her. Where are the babies?"

"I don't know. I'll call her next."

A minute later she hung up and said, "Turn right on Maple. They're at Happy Kids Daycare."

Reid and Campbell checked in from Claire's while we were still at Happy Kids Daycare to report signs of forced entry and struggle, but nothing to indicate a severe injury had happened in the house. I ordered Campbell back to his normal patrol route. The department was stretched thin. We didn't have that large a force to begin with, and we were dealing with all today's crime scenes with numbers already reduced by vacations for Thanksgiving weekend. 

An hour and a couple of phone calls to Dwight later, Beattie was safely in a bunker with Jordan and two more female Guard members for protection and babysitting duties. The bunker had an interior cell to isolate Helena, because as she had immediately reminded us, this was Friday. 

Parker had gotten quieter and more tense the longer it took us. As far as I knew Claire was the only close friend that Audrey had kept for any length of time. There had been Julia Carr, but she hadn't stayed in Haven very long. The rare hints Parker had dropped about her past had never been rife with talk of friends. 

We finally made it to Claire's house an hour and a half after we left the station. Parker walked through the scene with a sort of determinedly numb detachment that I recognized. Officer Mary Reid was one of our older officers. Steady and dependable, even if she wasn't the most imaginative. Lack of imagination could be a real asset here in Haven. She had completed a preliminary sweep, but an appointment book with times and initials was the only interesting thing she'd found. There had been nothing scheduled for today aside from the lunch with AP, and we already knew who AP was in this case. 

Three hours later, we had no more idea who had taken her or where to find her than we'd had when we arrived. Parker had flipped from forcibly calm to quietly seething. I tried to find something comforting to say, but I was still on my own emotional see-saw and nothing came to mind. When we arrived at the station, I tried to muster up _something_. The best I could manage was a gruff, "We'll find her."

The look she gave me said she wasn't in the mood for platitudes, but then it softened and I heard my sleeve rustle as she she patted my arm. "Thanks." 

Martinez was waiting for me when I walked in. "Sir, I only got three of the people on that list to answer the phone. Those three gave me alibis for last night. I followed up and they checked out." She bounced on the balls of feet, just a bit. Martinez was young and eager to prove herself, but so far was turning out to be a good officer. 

"Good work."

"There's more, sir."

I quirked an eyebrow at Parker. I had been that young once. "Go on."

"I drove to the houses, sir, and none of them are home. Not even the Wilsons, sir."

"Are you sure the Wilsons weren't just hiding?"

"Yes, sir. Their van is gone from the driveway, and I never heard any sound of the kids. Most of the others were just gone. Cars still in their driveways. I didn't see any signs of disturbances, but it just seemed off to me."

"Good job, Martinez."

She squared her shoulders and marched away, head held high. 

Parker shook her head. "I was never that young. Never."

"What do you make of that?"

"Could be that some of them just refused to answer or were out for legitimate reasons, but my gut says we just found Legion."

Martinez darted back into the room, "We've got a commotion near the gazebo." 

I growled. I did not want to deal with our normal slate of Troubles today, especially since we'd just spent all afternoon chasing our tails on Claire's disappearance, but I grabbed my jacket and followed Parker out of the station. When we arrived at the park, there was a large crowd gathered on the sidewalk. Sean Brosnan stood under the gazebo with an old style boom box and a microphone. 

"People of Haven, you must wake up! The Guard can't help you. The police _won't_ help you. The Church wants to purge you."

We shooed the lookie-loos back. When would people learn to stay away from an active Trouble? Maybe just trouble in this case. Brosnan had never been a fan of the Haven PD. He had a habit of trying to transcend conscious thought with the aid of various substances, and a history of making a public spectacle while doing it. The jail time that resulted had only ever seemed to make him more determined to cause problems.

He was still shouting, but it wasn't until he said, "This town needs a reconciliation, so it can move forward. This town needs _order_! _Balance_!" That I really heard him. Parker and I both charged the gazebo.

Brosnan carefully set the mic down and pressed a button on the box. A slow heavy beat began pulsing from it. Parker and I were both on the grass now. Brosnan broadened his stance and lifted his arms like he was posing for a superhero photo shoot. An electric guitar had joined the beat. Brosnan smiled, took a deep breath, and huffed it out as a heavily modulated voice on the boom box said, " _I am iron man_!" 

A pulse went out from him, hurtling toward, then through Parker and me. Parker ran right on past me toward Brosnan, but I was frozen in place. _Parker_. I said it, but nothing came out. I saw Parker turn around, see that I wasn't following, and come back. The song moved on to the iconic guitar riff, and I recognized it as the Black Sabbath classic. Before Audrey got back to me, the world tilted sideways. When it stopped moving everything looked sideways for a moment, before I was able to orient myself. I was at an almost horizontal angle, my head still stiffly in line with my body, leaving it several inches above the ground.

Parker knelt in front of me. "Nathan? Nathan!" 

_Has he lost his mind?_  
_Can he see or is he blind?_  
_Can he walk at all?_  
_Or if he moves will he fall?_

I tried to answer, to move, anything, but nothing happened. 

The song kept speeding up. It zipped right past sounding like the Chipmunks were singing it. Audrey looked back toward Brosnan, then at me. Her mouth moved rapidly. The words were so fast they skipped sounds, and I couldn't understand them. Panic was setting in. _Parker_! Still no sound came from my mouth. She looked worried, reached a hand out toward me. I saw it go toward my face. I knew she had to be touching me, but I didn't feel it. _I didn't feel it_!

Parker turned away and walked out of my line of sight. Her movements seemed jerky, like watching 1930's newsreel footage. Sound had faded to a vague background static. I hadn't felt her touch. I couldn't see any of myself in the direction my eyes were looking. Was I still here? Had she been reaching toward the last place she saw me and met with nothing?

It took a while before I could think past the panic. I could see Brosnan just at the edge of my field of vision. He hadn't moved in all this time, but Parker's movements had continued to speed up. If he was still here then my body must be okay as well. I hadn't disappeared, hadn't turned to stone—at least not literally. I was just stuck.

Why had he done this? Why would he catch himself in his own Trouble? I was still conscious, so he must be, also. He worked for Legion. Quoting that letter was no coincidence. That was enough reason to want to throttle him, but trapping me here when I needed to find them and lock them up? They had gone too far. 

Everything but me and Brosnan had sped up to fast-forward. Could he hear her? For me, everything had faded to background hum a while ago. How could Parker talk him down if he couldn't hear her? Would she realize he couldn't hear her? Talking might not have helped even if he could. He had triggered his Trouble on purpose, which meant either he was in control of when it lifted or he knew it had a time limit.

The world kept speeding up until anything more mobile than a lamp post was a blur. I couldn't judge the passing of time anymore, but surely it must have been hours, at least? Hours that Legion could be using to terrorize my town. Hours that Parker had been trying to save _me_ instead of finding the drunk that stabbed Duke.

My vision blurred, losing even the gazebo and lamps, and when it cleared, I was in the morgue. Flickers at the edge of my vision were the only indication I had that something was moving around me in normal time. From what I could tell, I was on one of the tables. A whole new level of fear set in. Had I been cut open? Were the flickers I was seeing Lucassi autopsying me? 

_I'm alive! I'm alive! Don't kill me. Don't..._

A white board materialized in front of me. Writing slowly came into focus.

_We are not autopsying you. We know you're in there, but it's taking an hour to get a message through to you. I'll fix this, Nathan._

No. I didn't have _time_ for this. The words on the board blurred. They came back into focus, and I had lost an hour. 

_Duke is still doing well. I have a possible ID on the drunk. Jim Sorenson. We're trying to find him. Regulars are cleared. George will be here in the morning._

Relief that Parker wasn't just focusing on this Trouble washed through me. This message stayed up long enough for me to wonder if I had been left for the night. With Duke in ICU, Dwight stuck with medical duties, and me a useless statue, who was left to watch Parker's back? With a new faction in town, I didn't like the thought of her with no Trouble savvy back-up. The message blurred, then cleared again. 

_I have to sleep now, but I think we're getting through to Brosnan. Dwight says Duke is still good. Vince and Dave are making progress. Still no sign of the kidnap victims. Neighbors have reported a few others absent when they shouldn't be. Nothing concrete yet on Legion._

It was true that people the Rev kidnapped didn't have a lot of love for the department and me in particular after Duke wasn't charged, but I hadn't pegged any of them for something like this. I wasn't surprised that Jim Sorenson was likely our angry drunk, and there were others that I wouldn't have been surprised to hear—Margery Wilson's common law husband and Frank Michaels were both close to the top of the list of angry victims/associates of victims—but what had happened in the _Gull_ had been deliberate, meticulous, well-planned.

A violent, drunken attack was something Duke would never admit to fearing, but he had six locks on his main hatch. The men from the _Gull_ hadn't had time to secure the hatch when they dropped him off. Had Duke been so out of it that even after they had left and he had gone for the alcohol, he hadn't locked the door?

Flickers and the blurring of the words told me that it must be morning already. _George is working on the hard drives. Cameras were intact at the Gull. Haven't found the gap in coverage yet. Found blood and a broken cell phone in the brush at the edge of the parking lot. Disposable cell, so no names, but last number dialed was HPD. Legion claims to have Claire._

I spent what felt to me like several minutes staring at the same message, hashing over everything that had happened, trying to make all the pieces fit, and worrying about Duke. Whose phone had that been, and what had happened to that person? What purpose could they have in kidnapping Claire? Where had I seen that redhead? The message lasted longer than the overnight message. I became increasingly certain that something had happened to Audrey. If time was still moving like it had been, then it had been at least an entire day since that message had appeared. Another several minutes as I perceived them, and I figured that it must be dark outside again.

Helpless fury. That was all I could manage like this, and that knowledge only made it worse. A vague feeling of being off-balance and a blast of visual input, almost like colorful static, replaced my view of the morgue. It slowly resolved into the interior of a storage closet. A small marker board was propped on a shelf in front of me.

_Audrey's gone. I've moved you over to the hospital, so I can keep an eye on both of you. Dwight._

What the _hell_? What did he mean 'Audrey's gone.' Someone took her? Why was he bothering with keeping an eye on me instead of trying to find her? 

Duke. Who else could he trust to keep Duke safe? But someone had to look for Audrey! A new message appeared on the board. 

_We are looking for her. There is nothing you can do like this. We have a good lead on Sorenson._

'We' in this case must mean the Guard. That didn't exactly fill me with confidence. Some of them were as likely to give the man pointers on finishing the job next time as they were to try to find out what he knew about Legion. 

I tried to move, to speak, anything. The message board blurred, and never resolved. I hadn't felt powerless to this degree since the nightmares I used to have way back in elementary school, and even then the feeling had faded shortly after I woke up.

Was I awake? Was this even real? If I was asleep I would wake up. Something would wake me up. My mom always knew when I was having a nightmare and came… 

No. This was a Trouble. I was stuck. I had to keep my head together, because this would reverse and then I needed to be ready to act.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Roseveare for beta reading this. Any mistakes remaining are my own. Thank you to everyone who has read and commented. I really appreciate any and all comments. 
> 
> No six month wait this time, so yay for that! I'm over 50,000 words on this story now. I always knew it was probably going to be that long, but this is the first time I've written that much on a single story. Pretty proud of myself over here. Please stay tuned, more chapters are on their way.


	11. Chapter Eleven

 

 

### 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

**DUKE**

 

My throat hurt. Raw like I'd been screaming. Had I been screaming? The Rev. McKee! Panic tried to take over, but something muted it into nagging anxiety. A hand gripped mine, firmly but not painfully, and that contact cut through the unease. 

"Duke. It's Dwight. You're in the hospital. You're safe now."

A shaky breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding left me and took the almost-panic with it. My throat still hurt. I tried to bring my free hand up to rub my throat, but it was strapped to something. 

_Strapped to a table._

Table? Why did my mind jump to a table? Confusion further clouded my senses. It felt like it lasted forever until a voice cut through saying _'You're safe now.'_ and the anxiety subsided, because I knew with certainty that that voice spoke true. I tried again to shift my arm. Not a table. Soft. Beeping. Air—Oxygen—whooshing against my face through a plastic mask. _'You're in the Hospital.'_ I tugged on my arm again, more cautiously this time. It moved, but something locked my elbow straight. A memory of someone saying, _'You've been trying to remove the IV.'_ Dr. Sinclair in Camden. No. Not Dr. Sinclair speaking now. Guard threatened him. He'd never be my doctor again, but someone was talking….

Dwight. I realized his voice had kept up the litany, telling me where I was, that I was safe. I squeezed his hand to let him know I heard him. He stopped and waited while I tried to settle into myself again. There was barely felt pain, blunted almost to nothing. Why I was here escaped into the haze. I hadn't gotten an eye open yet, but felt lethargy pulling me back under.

 

 

I woke with a start. I felt Dwight's hand lax in mine, then heard a heavy snore. I should tell him I've got this and he should stretch out somewhere. I squeezed his hand, tried saying his name, but couldn't even hear myself over the Oxygen mask. I gave up after a couple of attempts. I wanted to care enough to put in more effort, but couldn't. 

I knew this feeling. Didn't remember the name, but I'd been on it after the Rev. I thought of it as the blink-and-everything- changes medication. That was what was making it so hard to think, so hard to care. I remembered being awake earlier and it was easier to put thoughts together now, so they must be tapering it out. I had the feeling I'd rather stay sedated. 

 

Pain. Someone was touching me. Hands on my legs. On my arm. My eyes snapped open. Bright lights. Colors. It made no sense. I struggled, but couldn't get purchase with my elbows locked down. The hands went away. I huddled in place, not sure what direction the threat was coming from. It wasn't Sorenson. He was a wild card working on his own. It could be Mike and his gang come back to finish me off, but the lack of self-righteous posturing made that less likely.

The colors and lights started to sort themselves out into medical equipment and nurses in scrubs. I immediately felt the tension seeping out of me. I didn't have the energy—mental or physical—to sustain the panic, and the sight of nurses was inherently calming to me these days. Nurses were the first positive human contact I solidly remembered after two months of the Rev's hospitality. The hospital had become a place that automatically sent safety signals running through me. The names that had rolled through my mind only seconds before were now lost in the jumble.

_What the hell happened to me_?

The beeping of the heart monitor had slowed and the nurses were cautiously coming closer. My arms were mummy wrapped. Small wounds stung when they removed bandages. Thin lines ladder stepped up my arms, none of them serious, but I wondered how much they had bled with my reduced clotting. The beginning of what promised to be unbearable itching told me that they had already started healing. 

There was a lull in their activity, so I interjected. "What happened?"

The one in charge shifted side to side and didn't look at me as she said, "I don't know. It's not in your records." A subtle shift of her arm flashed a Guard tattoo my direction, and I didn't ask any more questions.

The assistant lowered the head of the bed until it was flat. My heart rate picked up. Before I could examine too closely why lying flat had my heart racing, Guard Tattoo turned around with a shiny pair of scissors held high above my chest. No. A knife. Glinting. Plunging toward my heart. Frozen into place by something. The knife stopped barely above my skin by another hand. The faces were shadowed blurs. Then I heard fingers snapping and, "Mr. Crocker. _Mr. Crocker_. Duke!" I pried my eyes open, and saw the Guard nurse leaning over me, concern etched in her features. 

I nodded once then turned my face away.

"We have to change the bandages on your chest, and I need to hear that you understand that."

"I'm good." A chuckle from the wrong side of desperation escaped my lips. "I'm good."

There was the deep ache of damaged muscle in my chest and the sharp sting of stitches pulling with every breath. My side throbbed in time with my heartbeat. Definitely the hospital. I could see Haven through a gap in the mini-blinds. Dwight had been here. _I am not in danger here_.

"We are going to remove some of the lines, so that you can move your arms." Guard tattoo was definitely the spokesperson of the group. Had she introduced herself by name? I couldn't remember. Distrust of any Guard member not directly vouched for by Dwight warred with my inclination to trust nurses. I tried to keep an eye on all three of them at once, but my head was still muzzy and I knew I was missing parts of it. 

She began by unwrapping the gauze tying my arm to the... whatever, the board-like object. "Now, don't bend your elbow, it'll move the IV needle and hurt."

My arm was tightly wrapped both above and below my elbow. I turned away before she could pull it out. I had seen more than enough of my own blood lately. 

...I had? Where had that thought come from? 

The nurse on the other side of the bed was freeing my right arm from its board. I blinked at the IV access port. Two accesses? My eyes strayed up to the pole beside the bed. A feeding tube. Ok, yeah, I had noticed that already. The stiff tubing favored by hospitals made its presence known in my nose and down my throat. Not surprising. I still had twelve pounds to regain, and they wouldn't want any more setbacks. But there were three separate IV bags hanging. 

Things were still processing wrong somehow, so I took a slow scan. I found the tube sneaking from under the bandage across my chest. A central line? My breathing sped up. They put in a central line? And peripheral lines. Bandages all over me. There was something. Something. why couldn't I bring it to the front of my mind? The heart rate monitor was beeping faster. The image of a knife plunging toward my chest played over and over. Other images joined it, someone touching the wound on my chest, a woman crying, a man laughing, throwing up… Throwing up. No that was now. 

Hands were pulling me onto my side and a pink tray appeared as if by magic. When the retching finally stopped, there was a cool rag. After wiping my face down, I handed it back and sagged into the bed. I was spent. The nurses held back, waiting for some sign. I nodded slightly to them, and they began again. There was pulling and tugging. Guard Tattoo was side-eyeing my reactions. I swear she smirked when they pulled the bandages off my knees and I couldn't keep from hissing. 

Something terrible had happened. Something I didn't really want to remember, but was already beginning to. l didn't speak again. One thought had risen above the rest, quashing any desire to communicate. I didn't even know the full context. I just knew to the deeps of my heart that it was true. In that moment, more true than anything I had felt in my life. 

Maybe it would have been better if Nathan had been a few minutes later. 

 

_Could I really wish that? Really?_ Dwight had been by, but he was gone. The nurses with their hands—I'd swear they each had three pairs—had gone. I was alone with the slats of a mini-blind to stare at and the slowly dawning horror that I had sincerely wished that I hadn't been saved. Some part of me held onto that, ready to overwhelm everything else if I let it. Aside from not dying, positive thoughts were hard to come by right now. I tried turning on the television and the noise was too much. I had made real progress at not letting noise set me on high alert. I wondered how long it would take to recoup that progress. I tried calling Nathan's cell. No answer. Dwight. Audrey. Nothing. I couldn't keep from replaying what had happened at the _Gull_.

A nurse came by again. It took every grounding technique I had to stay present and keep still. 

I would never be free of this.

The thought chased through my mind, circling, gnawing, newly recalled memories playing on repeat. The knife plunging toward my chest and Margery's expression. The kid's refusal of forgiveness flashed as each breath pressured the stitches. Sorenson's anger known with every slight shift in the bed. And it wasn't enough. Would never be enough. 

I couldn't win this. How could I even take a seat at the table to play the game when I knew the house had stacked the deck against me? Hadn't that been my whole life, though? Fighting the odds, cheating the house before it could cheat me? 

Every circle came back to my heart. Before, I could weigh anchor, drift to any port that struck my fancy, dive into a fray and depend on my ability to run or fight if it went badly. Now I was tied to doctor's appointments, schedules, pharmacies, 'lifestyle changes'. I couldn't even run to another city without referrals and sheafs of medical records. 

Most of my legal capital—my only kind of capital these days—was tied to the _Gull_. To permanently leave town, I would have to sell it. The Shaws had trusted me with their heritage. Stuck in a town where being beaten and tortured right in my own restaurant and home was apparently a risk I ran just by breathing these days.

Really said a lot about how much stock the rest of Haven put into my worth as a human being. I didn't ask to be Simon Crocker's spawn. Crocker Family Legacy my ass. It was a curse as bad as any out there. 

The shadows crawled across the blinds. The nurses had been back, all hands and professionalism. I didn't have anything to say. They were busy. Like everyone else. I recognized what I was doing to myself with the negative self-talk. I knew where the spiraling thoughts led. I'd seen the bottom of plenty of bottles, and woken up in strange places, hurting all over but with the demons gone, enough times to know what I was doing to myself. But I was in pain and alone and trapped in place by medical bullshit, and couldn't break out of it. Not even as that first horrible thought that it _would_ have been better if I hadn't been saved loomed over everything else.

I couldn't cope like that, and I couldn't stay here any longer. I was too exposed here. Too alone. The seductive promise of having people in my life had been so easy to succumb to, to depend on. Today I was getting myself out of here. I'd pretend to be slipping out for a smoke to get off this floor, then find some clothes and get myself back to the _Rouge_. 

I felt it when I stood up, but thought I could push through. I made it nearly to the elevator before I fainted. I woke up with a very stern looking Guard Tattoo staring at me. A series of questions and a wheelchair ride back to my room later, I was ready to curl up and pretend to sleep the rest of the night to avoid my shame. She had other ideas. 

"You do realize I'm on your side, right? _Dwight_ asked us to watch you." She paused for that to sink in before adding, "Also, hospital policy, you're now listed as a fall risk. There's a pressure sensor under the mattress and an alarm will sound if you get up." 

Trapped. I was trapped.

Her expression softened a little. "Hey, it's not like you're a prisoner or anything. You want to go on a walk just press the call button. Someone will go with you to keep you from hitting the floor again. You're lucky you didn't tear a stitch this time."

That quelled the impending panic attack, but didn't really improve my mood. I managed to get out that I just wanted to sleep now, and she left. I was alone. Again.

 

I had slid into a mostly asleep pattern sometime after dark. The nurses did their usual routine of waking me up for something every hour or so. It did nothing to improve my mood. Breakfast came, and went back untouched. What was the point? Another nurse flashed a Guard tattoo at me. Even knowing she was working for Dwight couldn't persuade me to feel any safer.

The negative thoughts always managed to pick up smoothly from where I fell asleep. I wasn't a member of the team. I wasn't even a fucking bystander. No, I was a hindrance that had to be babysat and protected. I dozed more. At least they kept waking me up before I could get to the really good nightmares. 

I heard movement in the room. I didn't bother to look at the nurse. 

"Duke." It was Dwight's voice.

I didn't particularly want to talk to him either. 

"Duke. I need your help." Dwight sounded tired. I'd heard that before, but there was something else. He almost sounded scared, and he needed my help.

I carefully rolled over and then raised the head of the bed. "You really need _my_ help?"

Relief broke across him and he grabbed my hand. "You have no idea how good it is to see you really awake. Do you remember what happened?"

"I remember...things. Flashes. People. I remember people."

"I'm right here. You're at Haven General. You're safe."

The familiar refrain lifted a weight. "Jim Sorenson. He was on the _Rouge_."

"We got him, but he's not talking." 

I shuddered, pulling the stitches, sending memories playing through my mind yet again. "At the _Gull_ … I couldn't have beaten those odds even before."

"Did you know them?"

I snorted. "Yeah. People the Rev took." I held up my bandaged arm. "Justice. Fucking justice, Dwight." I let my arm drop to the bed and shook my head. 

"That was _not_ justice."

I didn't want to argue the point right now, so I plowed on ahead. "The ringleader is an outsider. Guy drank his own Kool-Aid."

"That sounds about right. We've… gotten letters."

"What?"

"These people are calling themselves Legion. They've declared war against everybody in town. The Guard, the church, the police."

A ball of dread formed in the pit of my stomach. "Where is Nathan? Audrey?"

Dwight's lips pressed into a thin line. "Audrey disappeared. Nathan is…" He considered carefully. "Indisposed."

"What the hell does that mean?" I sat up straighter.

Dwight sighed. "He was hit by a Trouble the day after you were attacked. He's not in danger as far as we can tell, he's just immobile." 

"Immobile how?"

"It's like he was turned into a statue. Lucassi found that if we left an EEG on him, and time compressed the results, he's in there, just slowed down."

This was bad. Whose Trouble had hit him? If it was Sean Brosnan, well, the Brosnan family had a garden full of eerily human statues that Sean had once claimed were actually real people that had gotten stuck that way. We were fifteen and drunk on the first batch of moonshine I made completely by myself, but I still remembered that creepy as fuck garden. Was Nathan still in there? Had it been too long? How much time was too much? 

Stop. Breathe. It couldn't have been that long. Another deep breath. Keep calm. Nathan would be fine. We knew where he was. That was something.

I didn't quite look Dwight in the eye as I asked, "And Audrey?"

"We got it on surveillance video. Identified the same two men who left you on the _Rouge_."

Things were still fuzzy there. I remembered vomiting and a determination to get my feet under myself to not be dragged, and feeling relief at being alone finally. But who did I not want to let drag me? Vague images began to pull together: An ugly jumper, shaggy red hair, an unwanted, but needed support. I had him now, but there were two of them—my breath caught in my chest. A knife spinning, catching the light, I was laying on a...on the back seat of a car. The knife clattered onto my side table, dropped on the floor as Sorenson stomped away from me. "You got-got them on t-tape? Who are they?"

"We haven't been able to identify them yet. Thought a guy with hair like that would be easy to ID, but he's never had a driver's license in the state of Maine as far as we can tell. Audrey put in a request to run his image through the national database, but we haven't heard back from them yet. The other guy—"

"Mike." Reaching for me with grim determination, dragging the knife across my arm. Names. After everyone left and he took the knife, he had said their names. I went away, and didn't process it at the time, but it was there in perfect clarity now. Dwight squeezed my hand. I drew in a shaky breath. "The redhead called him Mike."

"Our video wasn't the best quality either time. Can you give me a description?"

"Yeah. I can do that, but it's not going to do you much good. Mike's one unremarkable looking bastard. Average build. Average height. Medium brown hair, clean cut. Brown eyes. No tats, no marks, no facial hair. Dressed average, but he was the leader. Had all those people with him, and you know what's crazy? I was worried about them. Worried that they would have to live with this, with being the monster, so I convinced him to send them away." 

I rolled my head back toward the window, stared at the mini-blinds again. "I was half-naked, tied to a table, and already bleeding while they all waited for a turn to cut me, and I was worried about them. How fucking pathetic is that, Dwight?"

"They were working with him, but not part of his group?"

Classic Dwight to answer with a question. I sighed. "Yeah. He kept preaching to them. Trying to pep them up to it."

"So, you convinced a cult leader to send away his audience to save them from themselves. How'd you do that?"

I didn't answer. I'd been so sure that I was doing the right thing. That it was important to keep other people from becoming the monster I already was, and somewhere in the back of my mind, _hope_. But I wasn't sure now, and the hope had died around the time the first pint of blood leaked out of me.

"Duke. I know you. You made a choice that saved them. Probably to protect them from the nightmares and guilt, and I'm going to guess that it somehow involved offering yourself. That's not pathetic. It's brave, and I'd trust you to have my back anytime."

That earned him a look and raised eyebrow. I was so far from having anyone's back right now that him saying it was borderline cruel.

"You're selling yourself short. I really need these descriptions and details, and you're pushing yourself hard to give me answers. So yeah, no matter what, I believe you've got my back."

Right. Descriptions. Details. He needed my help and I was having a pity party. We had to get Audrey away from these assholes, Nathan unfrozen, and stop them from hurting the town. I squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed hard before I looked at him again. I had to pull back far enough that I could talk without feeling. 

I did it. For two hours I talked like we were going over the plays of last week's football game. Dwight followed my lead and took notes. Eventually, he closed his notebook. He stared at me for a long moment. one hand hovering over mine then he blinked and looked down. 

"Duke, I—" He broke off with a sigh, gripped my hand, and said, "I'll be back, Duke. As soon as I can."

I nodded.

His eyes skittered over my face without ever meeting my gaze and he retreated. I sank back into the mattress and stared at nothing. I was wrung out. Empty. I should care about the way he was behaving. I should care, period, but I just couldn't. I remembered things more clearly now. Faces in the crowd, timeline. I wondered if they could give me something to make it fuzzy again.

I nodded.

His eyes skittered over my face without ever meeting my gaze and he retreated. I sank back into the mattress and stared at nothing. I was wrung out. Empty. I should care about the way he was behaving. I should care, period, but I just couldn't. I remembered things more clearly now. Faces in the crowd, timeline. I wondered if they could give me something to make it fuzzy again.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Duke's back!

**Author's Note:**

> I have not finished writing this, but I am going to start posting it. I have some buffer built up, so I should be able to stay ahead of myself. Stick with me on this one. It is going places. 
> 
> Kudos and comments totally make my day and are always appreciated.


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